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JOHN DUNTON'S LETTERS 
FROM NEW ENGLAND 



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CHESTER NOYES GREENOUGH 



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JOHN DUNTON'S LETTERS 
FROM NEW ENGLAND 



BY 

CHESTER NOYES GREENOUGH 



REPRINTED FROM 

THE PUBLICATIONS 

OF 

C|ie Colonial ^octet^ of 2t^a0flfaclju0ett0 

Vol. XIV 



CAMBRIDGE 

JOHN WILSON AND SON 

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1912 



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JOHN DUNTON'S LETTERS FROM NEW ENGLAND 

Even though the historical literature of New England were far 
richer than it is in such diaries as those of Samuel Sewall and Cotton 
Mather and in such observations as those of Lechford and Josselyn, 
there would still be an honorable place for such a document as we 
apparently have in John Dunton's Letters from New England. 
Nothing could be more welcome than the record of a London book- 
seller who spent five months in Boston in the critical year 1686, whose 
point of view is that of a friendly outsider, whose acquaintance in- 
cluded not merely the clergy and the magistrates but many other 
types as well, whose observation comprehended Indians, adventur- 
ers, tavern-keepers, picnics, sermons, and executions, and whose 
portraits of people are perhaps more numerous, as they certainly are 
more vivid, than those of almost any other writer of that time and 
place. The wonder would seem to be that more extensive use has 
not been made of a record of which the date, contents, and point of 
view lead us to expect so much. Not that Dunton has been wholly 
neglected: many historians ^ have made use of him, and one or two ^ 
have praised in the highest terms the truthfulness and insight of his 
portraits. These portraits do, indeed, deserve our close attention. 

» Among others, Palfrey, History of New England, iii. 60 n, 69 n, 487 n; 
Sibley, Harvard Graduates, ii. 17, 130, 240, 266, 280, 304; Winsor, Memorial 
History of Boston, ii. 199, 413 n, 433, 495, 500, iv. 531; G. E. Littlefield, 
Early Boston Booksellers, pp. 139-143; S. G. Drake, History and Antiquities 
of Boston, 1856, pp. 459-467, 472 note, 595 and note. 

* "In the description of the Boston old maid — which must be taken entire 
if we would comprehend its truthfulness and its characteristic revelation of the 
time — the gay traveller [Dunton] records what he saw" (W. B. Weeden, Eco- 
nomic and Social History of New England, i. 299-300). This particular portrait, 
of which we shall say more later, may be found in the Letters from New England, 
pp. 98-102, or in the Life and Errors, i. 102-103. 

Whitmore (Introduction to the Letters, p. xxiv, Boston, Prince Society, 1867) 
regards these letters "as unique sketches of New-England life, honestly drawn, 
and defective rather than erroneous." Whitmore also (p. xviii) thinks that "the 
portraits of Mrs. Breck, Mrs. Green, and Comfort Wilkins, are descriptions of 
such Puritans as we may be proud to claim for Massachusetts." 

Throughout this article references to Dunton's Letters from New England are 
to Whitmore's edition made for the Prince Society, and — unless the contrary 
is stated — references to Dunton's Life and Errbra are to J. B. Nichols's edition, 
in two volumes, London, 1818. 



214 THE COLONIAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS [March, 

But first let us see who Dunton was and how he came to write about 
New England. 

John Dunton* was born on May 4-14, 1659. His father, previously 
Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and then rector of Graffham 
in Huntingdonshire, was the third John Dunton in succession to be 
a minister. Our John Dunton, unabl^ to keep up this tradition, was 
apprenticed, when between fourteen and fifteen years old, to Thomas 
Parkhurst, the London bookseller, who was later to bring out Cotton 
Mather's Magnalia. Dunton's apprenticeship seems not to have been 
wholly industrious. When it ceased, apparently in 1681, he com- 
menced bookseller on his own account. His first publication was 
entered in Michaelmas Term of 1681.^ Many others followed, one 
of them a collection of funeral sermons, The House of Weeping, 1682, 
by his father. On August 3, 1682, he married Elizabeth, daughter 
of Samuel Annesley, D.D. For a while "prosperity and success were 
the common course of Providence,"^ but presently "there came a 
universal damp upon Trade," ^ and Dunton, having £500 due him 
in New England, decided to "ramble" thither. 

In November,^ 1685, accordingly, in the ship Susannah and Thomas, 
Captain Thomas Jenner, he set sail from the Downs for Boston. After 
a very long and unpleasant voyage, in the course of which he either 
saw or just missed seeing an amazing variety of fishes and marine 
animals — including an alligator ^ — Dunton reached Boston. The 



* The sketches of his life in the Dictionary of National Biography, in John 
Nichols's Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, v. 59-83, in John Bowyer 
Nichols's introduction to the 1818 edition of the Life and Errors, in Whitmore's 
introduction to the Letters from New England, and elsewhere, all rest upon 
Dunton's own account in the Life and Errors, first published in 1705. 

2 Arber, Term Catalogues, i. 458. 
' Life and Errors, vol. i. p. 79. 

* In the Life and Errors (i. 87) Dunton gives the date November 2; in the 
Letters from New England (p. 16) he has it November 20. But Sewall (Diary for 
January 28, 1686) records that "Jenner came from He Wight the 13, of November" 
(5 Massachusetts Historical Collections, v. 119). Dunton says (Letters, p. 22), 
"It was on Friday, the 29th October, we began to sail from the Isle of Wight." 
It happens that in 1685 the 29th of October fell on Thursday. 

^ "Being laid down upon the Bed one Day to repose my self, Palmer pDunton's 
apprentice and servant] comes down to me, and tells me, I had lost the sight of a 
very great and strange Creature, which our Captain call'd an Alligator; this 
Creature is of a vast length and breadth, (some say many yards in length:) in 
colour he is of a dark brown, which makes him the more unperceptable when he 



1912] JOHN DUNTON's LETTERS PROM NEW ENGLAND 215 

date of his arrival has been variously stated. Whitmore ^ puts it 
"within a day or two of February 10," 1686. Palfrey ,2 probably fol- 
lowing John Nichols/ puts it in March. John Bowyer Nichols ^ pre- 
fers February. We have, to be sure, Dunton's own word that he was 
at sea "above four months." ^ But as for that, we have also Dun- 
ton's word ^ that he spent ten months in New England, although he 
declares that he sailed for home on July 5, 1686,^ — an assertion 
wholly irreconcilable with the statement that he set sail on either 
November 2 or November 20, and spent four months at sea. 

The true date appears as soon as we examine Sewall's Diary. For 
we know from Dunton ^ that he sailed with Captain Thomas Jenner, 
and we have, furthermore, a rather explicit account ^ of his arrival 
at Boston. "We . . . Landed near the Castle, within a mile of 
Boston, where we lay that Night; . . . Having refresh'd our selves 
the first Night at the Castle, where ... we were very civilly treated 
by the Governour,^" the next morning we bent our Course for Boston; 
. . . over the Ice." Sewall's account, although it makes no mention 
of John Dunton, agrees in all these circumstances and also supplies 
the date : ^^ 



lies as a Trapan in the Waters. He is of so vast a strength that no Creature is 
able to make his Escape from him, if he gets but his Chaps fastened in them; for 
he has three Tere of Teeth in his Chaps and so firmly sealed and armed with Coat 
of Male, tha( you may as well shoot at a Rock, or strike against Bars of Iron, as 
offer to wound him" (Letters, p. 35). 

1 Introduction to Letters, pp. xi, xxii. 

2 History of New England, iii. 487 note 2. 

3 Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, v. 63. 

* Life and Errors, vol. i. p. xi. 

6 Life and Errors, i. 89. In the Letters (p. 49) he says "almost four months." 
Compare note 7, below. This is disproved by the fact (see p. 216 and note 2) 
that on February 16, 1686, Dunton was given the freedom of Boston and signed 
his name to the record. 

* Letters, p. 69. 

^ "I came from Boston on the Fifth of July and was in London on the fifth of 
August; which was three months shorter than my passage thither" (Letters, p. 
302). 

8 Letters, p. 26; Life and Errors, i. 86, 88. 
» Letters, pp. 5.3-54; Life and Errors, i. 89-90. 
'0 Capt. Roger Clap, Governor of the Castle. 

" On account of the critical state ©f affairs in England and their bearing on the 
matter of the charter, the arrival of a ship was just then an event of even more 
consequence than usual. It is not unlikely that Captain Jenner was particularly 
expected, for we know that just one year before, on January 28, 1685, "at the 



216 THE COLONIAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS [March, 

Wednesday, Jan' 27. [1686] ... Is talli of a Ship below and some 
think it may be Jenner from London. 

Thorsday, January 28, Mr, Jenner having lodged at Capt. Clap's last 
night, with Mr. Belcher and others, come near twenty together to Serj* 
Bull's over the Ice and bring the News of the Rose Frigot ready to come 
and bring Mr. Randolph, who is to be Deputy Governour, and Mr. 
Dudley Governour. . . . The Town much filled with this discourse, . . . 
When Mr. Jenner came in the Magistrates went all off the Bench to hear 
his News in the Lobby."^ 

It is entirely clear, therefore, that John Dunton arrived in Boston 
Harbor on the evening of January 27, 1686, and reached the city on 
the following day. Dunton's own chronology is so shaky that it is a 
satisfaction to be able to fix this date by evidence from a trustworthy 
source. 

On February 16, 1686, Dunton was made a freeman of Boston,^ 
and about the same time he opened his bookshop at Mr. Richard Wil- 



opening of this Court the Gouemo' declard it, y* on the certeine or general! 
rumo''s in M'' Jenner, lately arrived, y* o' charter was condemned, & judgment 
entred vp, &c, they lookt at it as an incumbent duty to acquaint the Court w*^ 
it, & leaue the consideration of what was or might be necessary to them, &c" 
(Massachusetts Colony Records, v. 465). 

Our associate Mr. Henry H. Edes has kindly called my attention to the fact 
that there is much information about the Jenners in Wyman's Genealogies and 
Estates of Charlestown, i. 551-553. 

1 5 Massachusetts Historical Collections, v. 119. 

2 Letters, p. 65 note. The record, which is herewith reproduced, is as follows: 

Witnesse these presents that I ffrancis Burrowes of Bostone Merchant doe 
binde my selfe, my Execuf^ and Administraf^ to Edward Willis Treasurer of 
the Towne of Bostone in the sume of ffortie pounds in mony that John Dunton 
booke seller nor any of his ff amilie — shall not be chargable to this towne duringe 
his or any there abode therein. Witnesse my hand the 16th of ffebruary 1685. 

That is sd Burrowes bindes him selfe as aboue to sd Willis & his success''^ 
in the Office of a Treasurer, omited in ye due place aboue 

Fran: Burrotjghs 
John Dunton 

The date in this entry is, of course, 1685-6. The entry is found in a small 
quarto book in the office of the City Clerk of Boston, who has kindly allowed it to 
be examined and photographed. The book is that described on p. 12 of City 
Document No. 171 (1899) as containing Bonds for Security against Strangers, 
1679-1700. 







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1912] JOHN DUNTON's LETTERS FROM NEW ENGLAND 217 

kins's, "opposite to the Town-House," where he also lodged. He 
next presented various letters of introduction and began to look 
about him. Business did not, apparently, prevent him from making 
many "rambles" to neighboring towns or from cultivating the ac- 
quaintance of all who showed themselves friendly. He saw the execu- 
tion of Morgan on March 11, and the arrival of Randolph on May 14. 
On July 5 he sailed for London, where he arrived one month later .^ 

Dunton's subsequent career may be very briefly reviewed. He 
found his affairs involved in debt, was obliged to remain in hiding 
for ten months,^ and then "took a trip over to Holland, Flanders, 
Germany, &c." ' He returned to London on November 15, 1688,^ 
and resumed business at " the sign of the Black Raven . . . opposite 
to the Poultry Compter." ^ There for ten years he published, com- 
piled, and projected to his heart's content. He was temporarily sad- 
dened by the death of his wife in 1697, but remarried within a year, 
went to Ireland on a bookselling venture, returned, published his 
famous Life and Errors in 1705, wrote profusely and violently until 
1723, and died in obscurity ten years later. 

This career certainly leaves the impression of an increasingly irre- 
sponsible person. As such John Dunton seems to have been regarded 
by many of his contemporaries. Swift, in the Tale of a Tub (1704), 
alludes to Dunton's voluminous and indiscriminate publishing pro- 
jects,^ and in his Publick Spirit of the Whigs (1714) ironically 
praises Dunton's "famous tract entitled Neck or Nothing," which 
"must be allowed to be the shrewdest piece, and written with the 
most spirit, of any which has appeared from that side since the change 
of the ministry." ^ The Earl of Sunderland thought him "an impu- 
dent Fellow," who had "abused the greatest men in the Nation." ^ 
The writer of the footnote on Dunton in the Dunciad (ii. 144) agrees 

1 Letters, p. 301; Life and Errors, i. 137. 

2 Life and Errors, i. 138. 
» Life and Errors, i. 139. 

* Life and Errors, i. 151. 

* "I am informed, that worthy citizen and bookseller, Mr. John Dunton, has 
made a faithful and painstaking collection [of speeches], which he shortly designs 
to publish in twelve volumes in folio, illustrated with copper plates. A work 
highly useful and curious, and altogether worthy of such a hand" (Swift's Works, 
ed. Nichols, London, 1803, iii. 65). 

6 vi. 182. 

^ Life and Errors, ii. 760 note. 



218 THE COLONIAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS [Mabch, 

with Sunderland : " a broken ^ bookseller," the annotator calls him, 
"and an abusive scribbler. He wrote Neck or Nothing, a violent 
satire on some Ministers of State; a libel on the Duke of Devonshire 
and the Bishop of Peterborough, &c." ^ The London Post said of 
Dunton, "In spite of native Dvlness [he] resolves to be a Wit, as he 
always did to be a Knave, in spite of ... a whole volume of repent- 
ance." ^ Charges of financial untrustworthiness are also abundant,^ 
though vague, and a certain R. Key seems to indicate that Dunton 
was known to be licentious in personal conduct.^ Certainly there is 
no lack of nastiness in some of Dunton's writings,^ however admirable 
the moral tone of most of them. I fancy Dunton to have had an 
utterly irresponsible and fluctuating nature, in which by turns immor- 
ality, repentance, credulity, and vindictiveness directed his unceasing 
frenzy for publication. "Mr. John Dunton, lunatick," is the suc- 
cinct characterization of him in the second number of the Monitor 
(1714),^ and as early as 1707 Thomas Hearne records, "There is pub- 
lish'd The IP Part of the Pulpit Fool, by John Dunton a poor craz'd 
silly Fellow." ^ Certainly Dunton becomes less puzzling if we regard 
him, at least in his later years, as partially insane. Yet his publi- 
cations contain so much that is not his own, and the evidence of 
others about him is so full of prejudice and obscurity, that it is a very 
difficult matter to decide. 

The Letters from New England are eight in number, one of them 
apparently written from West Cowes, six from Boston, and one 
after the return to London. 



1 John Nichols (Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, v. 78 note) 
has "auction bookseller," which J. B. Nichols (Life and Errors, vol. i. p. vi) re- 
peats. But the reading in the annotated Dunciad (second edition) of 1729 (p. 
107 note) is "broken bookseller." So it is in Elwin and Courthope's edition 
(iv. 140 note). 

2 Pope's Works, ed. Elwin and Courthope, iv. 140 note. 
' Life and Errors, ii. 465. 

* Life and Errors, Chapter xii, passim. 

5 Life and Errors, ii. 759. The two letters from Key which Nichols reprints 
(Life and Errors, ii. 758-9) are distinctly those of a boon companion, not of a 
malicious critic. 

8 The fourth "Project" in the second part of Athenianism (1710), for example. 

^ Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, iv. 88 note. 

* Remarks and Collections of Thomas Hearne, ed. C. E. Doble, Oxford (Oxford 
Historical Society), 1886, ii. 26. 



1912] JOHN DUNTON's LETTERS FROM NEW ENGLAND 219 

The first, "From West-Cowes, in the Isle of Wight, Octob. 25th, 
1685," is addressed to his wife and narrates the embarkation and the 
beginning of the voyage. It is signed " Yrs Entirely / John Dunton." 

The second letter, written from Boston, dated February 17, 1685- 
6, and addressed "To My Only Brother Mr. Lake Dunton. Lately 
Return'd from Surat in the East-Indies," completes the account of 
the voyage. It is signed "Your truly Loving and / Affectionate 
Brother, / Philaret." ^ 

The third letter, dated from Boston, March 25, 1686, is addressed 
to Mr. George Larkin, at London, and is signed "Philaret." This 
letter, which is one of the most important of the series, must have 
required a considerable sum in postage, for in Whitmore's edition it 
fills about ninety pages. In it, declares Dunton: 

I shall observe this method: 

1. Give you an Account of my Reception at Boston: 

2. The Character of my Boston Landlord, his Wife and Daughter; 

3. Give you an Account of my being admitted into the Freedom of 
this City: 

4. I shall next describe the Town of Boston, it being the Metropolis 
of New-England; and say something of the Government, Law, and 
Customs thereof. 

5. I shall relate the Visits I made, the Remarkable Friendships I con- 
tracted, and shall conclude with the character of Madam Brick as the 
Flower of Boston, and some other Ladyes, And I'll omit nothing that 
happened (if remarkable) diu-ing my stay here. And m all this I will 
not copy from others, as is usual with most Travellers, but relate my 
own Observations.^ 

In the fourth letter, without date or place, but addressed to Dun- 
ton's cousin, John Woolhurst, at London, and signed "Philaret," 
we have an account of Dunton's "rambles "^ to Charlestown, 

1 "Philaret (or Lover of Vertue) was the Name that Cloris gave me in all the 
Letters she sent to me during the Time of our Correspondence" (Dunton's Atheni- 
anism, 1710, p. 5 note). Cloris was Elizabeth Singer, afterwards Mrs. Rowe, 
"die gottliche Rowe," with whom Dunton enjoyed a Platonic correspondence, 
if the evidence of his "Character of Madam Singer" (the first of the "Projects" 
in his Athenianism) can be relied upon. 

2 Letters, pp. 56-57. 
* His own word. 



220 THE COLONIAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS [March, 

Medford, New-Town, Winnisimet,^ Lynn, Nantascot, Wissaguset,^ 
Braintree, Dorchester, and Roxbury. In the course of this letter we 
find short descriptions of these towns, a good deal about Indians, and 
an account of the apostle Eliot, 

The fifth letter, undated, is to Dunton's father-in-law. Dr. Samuel 
Annesley, from his "Most Dutiful Son-in-Law, Philaret." It con- 
tains an account of the conversion of the Indians, for which Dunton 
modestly disclaims originality.^ 

The sixth letter is without date, but it contains letters between 
Dunton and his apprentice Palmer, which in the Life and Errors ^ are 
dated April 4, 1686, and April 10, 1686. It is addressed to his wife 
and is signed "Your ever Faithful / Philaret." It describes his 
ramble to Salem, whither he went alone, " save that by an Intercourse 
of Souls, my Dear, I had your Company." ^ 

The seventh letter, the last of those supposed to have been written 
from Boston, is addressed "To My Beloved Sister, Mrs. Sarah 
Dunton." It contains information about various matters relating 
to Indians, descriptions of Wenham and Ipswich, and two portraits 
of people. It has no date.® 

The final letter, "To Mr. Richard Wilkins in Boston in New Eng- 
land," briefly assures his former landlord of Dunton's safe arrival in 
London and his happy reunion with his wife. 

The earliest version of Dunton's account of New England is in the 
Life and Errors (1705).^ That account was very inadequately re- 



^ Now Chelsea. 

2 Now Weymouth. 

3 Letters, p. 221. 

4 Pp. 129, 130. 

6 Letters, p. 249. 

* In it, however, Dunton writes, "In a few weeks I hope to take my Leave of 
this New World" (Letters, p. 298). 

^ The / Life and Errors / Of / John Dunton / Late Citizen of London; / 
Written by Himself in Solitude. / With an Idea of a New Life; / Wherein is 
Shewn / How he 'd Think, Speak, and Act, might he / Live over his Days 
again : / Intermix'd with the / New Discoveries / The Author has made / In his 
Travels Abroad, / And in his / Private Conversation at Home. / Together with 
the Lives and Characters of a Thou- / sand Persons now laving in London, &c. / 
Digested into Seven Stages, with their Respective Ideas. / He that has all 
his own Mistakes confest, / Stands next to him that never has trans- 
grest, / And will be censur'd for a Fool by none, / But they who see no 



1912] JOHN DUNTON's LETTERS FROM NEW ENGLAND 221 

printed in 1814 in the Massachusetts Historical Collections.^ In 1818 
John Bowyer Nichols did much better: he not only reprinted the 
Life and Errors much more accurately and fully ,2 but also added 
selections from Dunton's other works, prefixed a good memoir, and 
appended a calendar of the Dunton MS in the Bodleian Library .^ 

From these manuscripts a copy of the eight "Letters from New 
England" was made^ under the supervision of Colonel Joseph L. 

Errors of their own. / Foe's Satyr upon himself, P. 6. / London: Printed for 
S. Malthus, 1705. 

The copy formerly owned by Charles Eliot Norton is now in the Harvard 
University Library. 
On the verso of p. 251 is advertised — 

Preparing for the PRESS, 

A Ramble through Six Kingdoms, 

BY 

JOHN DUNTON 

LATE 

Citizen of LONDON 

Wherein he relates, 1. His Juvenile Travels. 2. The History of his Sea 
Voyages. 3. His Conversation in Foreign Parts. 

With Characters of Men and Women, and almost ev'ry thing he Saw or Con- 
vers'd with. 

The like Discoveries (in such a Method) never made by any Traveller before. 

Illustrated with Fourty Cuts, representing the most pleasant Passages in the 
whole Adventure. 

With Recommendatory Poems, written by the chief Wits in both Universities. 

This Work will be finish'd by next Michaelmas and will be 2s. 6d. bound. 

1 Second Series, ii. 97-124. About one-third of the account is omitted without 
notice, the text is "improved" somewhat in the manner of Sparks, and the para- 
graphing is greatly changed. 

2 Even the edition of 1818, however, has omissions, generally not indicated: 
p. 98, character of Mr. C. (cf. ed. 1705, p. 131); p. 114, a paragraph omitted (cf. 
ed. 1705, pp. 156-157, and Letters, pp. 141-142); p. 122, one clause omitted (cf. 
ed. 1705, pp. 168-169); p. 133, a dialogue of about two and one-half pages on 
Platonic love omitted (cf. ed. 1705, pp. 125-128). These omitted passages, if re- 
stored, would make the book coarser and more discursive; in other words, more 
hke the Chester MS of the Letters. 

' MS Rawl., Miscel. 71 and 72. See Life and Errors, ii. 753-760. These 
manuscripts contain Dunton's version of the Letters from New England, and more 
than eighty other pieces, njost of which seem to be either actual letters to or from 
Dunton, or parts of fictitious correspondence. Often they are love letters, with 
answers in shorthand. There would seem to be material here for a more thorough 
study of Dunton's life and works than has yet been made. * 

* This transcript, which I shall refer to as the Chester MS, is now in the pos- 
session of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, the Librarian o'f 



222 THE COLONIAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS [March, 

Chester for the use of WilHam Henry Whitmore, who first printed 
the Letters from New England in 1867 for the Prince Society. We 
are under great obligations to Whitmore for having made these let- 
ters accessible. One wishes very much, however, that he had 
reprinted the whole of the Chester MS : to have done so would have 
revealed Dunton's vulgarity and his excursiveness, which, however 
unattractive, are important if we wish to know him. Even more does 
one wish that Whitmore had indicated every erasure and inter- 
polation in the Chester MS, for these bear vitally upon the question 
of the date and genuineness of the Letters, questions which Whitmore 
hardly raised at all. 

One question which Whitmore did raise, however, and which he 
did much to settle, is the question of Dunton's importance as an 
original authority. Whitmore was able to show that nearly every- 
thing that Dunton tells us about the Indians is copied almost ver- 
batim from either Roger Williams or Cotton Mather, though Dunton 
often takes pains to work over the information into monologues from 
imaginary persons whom he met on his rambles. Whitmore further 
shows borrowings from Josselyn's Two Voyages (1674) and from 
J. W.'s Letter from New England (1682). In all, Whitmore points out 
about thirty cases in which, without acknowledgment, Dunton appro- 
priates rather long passages from earlier writers. This was much more 
than a curious discovery, for it very importantly modified the idea 
of the value and purpose of the book which we might otherwise have 
had. 

When so much has been pointed out that is not original, one is 
naturally moved to see if there may not be still more. It appears 
that there is much more. 

Here, for example, is an episode of Dunton's voyage and beside it 
a passage from Josselyn's Two Voyages: 

JossELYN Dunton 

About 8 of the clock at night, a flame On the next Day, in the Captain's 

settled upon the main mast, it was Cabin, we had hot debates about a 
about the bigness of a great Candle, and Flame, which sometimes settles upon 



which has kindly allowed me to consult it. The different letters are paged sepa- 
rately; in referring to the MS, accordingly, the letter as well as the page is 
specified. 



1912] JOHN DUNTON's LETTERS FROM NEW ENGLAND 223 

is called by our Seamen St. Elmes fire, the main mast of a Ship ... It is 
it comes before a storm, and is com- about the bigness of a good large Can- 
monly thought to be a Spirit; if two die, and was call'd by the Seamen St. 
appear they prognosticate safety: Ellines Fire; it usually comes before a 
These are known to the learned by the storm, and is commonly thought to be 
names of Castor and Pollux, to the a Spirit; and here's the conjuration of 
Italians by St. Nicholas and St. Hermes, it, that tho' one is look'd upon as an 
by the Spaniards called Corpos Santos ill Omen, yet if two appear, they are 
(ed. Veazie, p. 8). said to Prognosticate Safety. These 

are known to the Learned by the 
names of Castor and Pollux: to the 
Italians, by St. Nicholas and St. Her- 
mes, and are by the Spaniards called 
Corpus Santos (Letters, p. 31). 

One cannot help wondering, after this, if the various sailors who 
told Dunton so much about the different fish they had met,^ had not 
managed to commit to memory large portions of some not very reli- 
able work on natural history, the identity of which has thus far eluded 
our search. 

In the fifth letter there is a rather distinct bit of description of the 
country through which Dunton rode on his trip to Natick. The 
letter is addressed to Dr. Annesley: 

As we rid along that lovely valley I have mention'd. Sir, we saw many 
lovely Lakes or Ponds, well stored with Fish and Beavers: These, they 
tell me, are the original of all the great Rivers in the Countrey, of which 
there are many, besides lesser Streams, manifesting the Goodness of the 
Soil, which is in some places black, in others red, with clay, Gravel, Sand 
and Loom, and very deep in some places, as in the Valleys and Swamps, 
which are low grounds, and bottoms, infinitely thick set with Trees and 
Bushes of all sorts; others having no other Shrubs or Trees growing but 
Spruce, under the Shades whereof we Rambled two or three miles together, 
being goodly large Trees, and convenient for Masts and Sail-Yards (Let- 
ters, p. 216). 

Josselyn had written: 

Within these valleys are spacious lakes or ponds well stored with Fish 
and Beavers; the original of all the great Rivers in the Countrle, of which 
there are many with lesser streams (wherein are an Infinite of fish) mani- 
festing the goodness of the soil which Is black, red-clay, gravel, sand, 
loom, and very deep in some places, as in the valleys and swamps, which 

* Letters, pp. 24 S. 



224 



THE COLONIAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS 



[March, 



are low grounds and bottoms infinitely thick set with Trees and Bushes 
of all sorts for the most part, others having no other shrub or Tree grow- 
ing, but spruse, under the shades whereof you may freely walk two or 
three mile together; being goodly large Trees, and convenient for masts 
and sail-yards (Two Voyages, pp. 37-38). 

It will be noticed that Dunton relies upon the authority of Josselyn 
to determine even the length of his ramble. Josselyn writes: "you 
may walk freely two or three mile together." Dunton echoes: "We 
rambled two or three miles together." No traveller ever followed 
his Baedeker more faithfully. 

That Josselyn actually was Dunton's Baedeker appears when we 
examine the short descriptions of the various towns which Dunton 
visited in his rambles. There are twelve of them in all,^ and the 
description of each ^ is taken almost verbatim from Josselyn. The 
account of Nantascot is a fair example: 



1 There is no description of Medford in the Letters: perhaps because Josselyn 
has none. Whitmore noted (pp. 66-69) that Dunton's description of Boston ia 
borrowed from Josseljna. 

2 The question where Josseljm got his descriptions of these towns is interesting. 
Some of them (Boston, Charlestown, New-Town, Lynn, Dorchester, Roxbury, 
Wenham, and Ipswich) he could have got, either wholly or in part, from Johnson's 
Wonder-Working Providence (1654); in all of them except the description of 
Wenham he may have borrowed from Wood's New Englands Prospect (1634). 
But of the three books (Wood, Johnson, and Josselyn) we know that Dunton must 
have used Josselyn. For convenience a list of these descriptions of towns is added, 
with page references to Wood (as edited by Charles Deane in 1865 for the Prince 
Society), Johnson (ed. J. F. Jameson, New York, 1910) and Josselyn (Veazie's 
edition) : 



Boston 



Wood 41-42 Johnson 70-71 Josselyn 124-125 



Charlestown ' 


' 43 




68-69 


' 126 


New-Town ' 


' 43 




90 


' 127 


Winnisimet ' 


' 44 




— ' 


' 128 


Lynn ' 


' 45 




73 


' 128 


Nantascot ' 


3 




— ' 


' 122-123 


Wissaguset ' 


' 40 




— ' 


' 123 


Braintree * 


' 40 




— ' 


' 123 


Dorchester ' 


' 41 




69-70 


' 123-124 


Roxbury ' 


' 41 




71-72 


' 124 


Wenham ' 


' — 




226 


' 129-130 


Ipswich or Agawam ' 


' 48-49 




96 


' 129 



It is curious that Josselyn follows Wood's order very closely in describing these 
towns, and that Dunton follows Josselyn's order with equal closeness. 



1912] 



JOHN DUNTON S LETTERS FROM NEW ENGLAND 



225 



JOSSELYN 



DuNTON 



... a Town called Nantascot, which 
is two Leagues from Boston, where 
Ships commonly cast Anchor. 

Pullin-point is so called, because the 
Boats are . . . haled against the Tide 
which is very strong, it is the usual 
Channel for Boats to pass into Mat- 
tachusets-Bay. 

There is an Island on the South-side 
of the passage containing eight Acres of 
ground. Upon a rising hill within this 
Island is mounted a Castle command- 
ing the entrance, no stately Edifice, 
nor strong ; built with Brick and Stone, 
kept by a Captain, under whom is a 
master-Gunner and others. 



Being come to Nantascot we took a 
survey of the Town, which is a Sea- 
Port, about two Leagues from Boston, 
where ships commonly cast Anchor: 
near which is Pullin Point, so called, 
because the Boats are haled against the 
Tide, which is very strong. It is the 
usual Channel for Boats to pass into the 
Massachusetts Bay. On the South 
Side of the Passage there is an Island 
containing about Eight Acres of ground; 
Upon a rising Hill within this Island is 
mounted a Castle. Here 'twas we 
first Landed, when I came into the 
Countrey; Tho' this Castle be no 
stately Edifice, nor very strong, being 
built with Brick and Stone, yet it com- 
mands the Entrance, so that no 'Ship 
can pass by without its leave: It is kept 
by a Captain, under whom is a Master- 
Gunner, and some others. 

I then took a transient view of Pullin- 
Point. The Bay is large, and has 
Boston in view, as soon as you enter 
into it: It is made by many Islands, 
the chief est of which is the Dear Island, 
which is within a flight shot of Pullin- 
Point: It is called Dear Island, be- 
cause great store of Deer were wont to 
swim thither from the main Land : We 
then viewed Bird Island, Glass-Island, 
State '-Island, and the Governour's 
Garden, where the first Apple trees in 
the Countrey were planted, and there 
also was planted a Vineyard: Then 
there is Round Island, so called from 
the figure of it, and last of all Noddles 
Island, not far from Charles-Town. 
Most of these Islands lie on the North- 
Side of the Bay (Letters, pp. 179-180). 

All this does not prove that Dunton did not visit these places, for 
we know that he saw Boston with his own eyes, even though he avails 
himself of Josselyn's description of it. But it is clear that we can- 



. . . The Bay is large, 

made by many Islands, the chief 
Deere-Island, which is within a flight 
shot of Pullin-point, great store of 
Deere were wont to swim thither from 
the Main; then Bird-Island, Glass- 
Island, Slate-Island, the Govemours 
Garden, where the first Apple-Trees in 
the Countrey were planted, and a vin- 
yard ; then Round-Island, and Noddles- 
Island not far from Charles-Town: 
most of these Islands lye on the North- 
side of the Bay (pp. 122-3). . 



So in Wliitmore. 



226 THE COLONIAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS [March, 

not use Dunton's descriptions to show what these towns were like 
in 1686. 

It is now time to raise the whole question of the date and genuine- 
ness ^ of these Letters. In his preface Whitmore observes: ^ 

In regard to the point as to these being the letters written at the time, 
Mr. Chester says that he does not regard them as letters actually sent 
from Boston to the parties addressed. They were all written in a uniform 
hand, on uniform paper, and may be considered rather as a journal, kept 
probably during his sojourn at Boston, and intended for publication. 
The other theory would be that this was his letter-book, in which, ac- 
cording to the custom of the times, he kept copies of the letters sent. 

Mr. Chester adds: "The interpolations and emendations are numer- 
ous, and some of them clearly of a later date. Sometimes entire pages 
were evidently after-thoughts, and occur at the end of the volume, being 
referred to by marks in the body of the MSS." 

Further than this Whitmore did not go. We do not know, there- 
fore, which pages were added; indeed we know hardly anything about 
the author's minor changes except what we can learn from the Chester 
MS in the library of the New England Historic Genealogical Society. 
A week at the Bodleian might clear up many difficulties. Neverthe- 
less, with the text as we have it something can be done. 

On the very first page of the Letters from New England there is a 
note, which Whitmore prints as a footnote, in which Dunton refers 
by page to his "lately published Farewell to Dublin." The farewell 
to Dublin — the actual event — took place late in December of 
1698, and the Dublin Scuffle, of which the Farewell seems to have 
formed a part, was not published until 1699. Again, at the very end ^ 
of his Letters, and also in his account of the negligence of his appren- 
tice,'^ Dunton has passages in which he gets nearly a year ahead of the 
date which must be assumed for the eighth letter, if we are to sup- 
pose that the entire manuscript represents a body of letters actually 
sent from New England. It is therefore at least clear that we have 



^ Genuineness as letters, I mean. The identity of the author is not being called 
in question. 

2 P. iv. 

3 Pp. 305-306. 
* P. 259. 



1912] JOHN DUNTON's LETTERS FROM NEW ENGLAND 227 

in the Chester MS certain passages which could not have been written 
from Boston in the year 1686. It remains to ask, then, whether such 
passages are numerous and incorporated in the letters, or whether 
they constitute merely a few such notes as the two just cited. 

In the second letter, dated March 25, 1686, we have a reference 
to "Major Dudley, afterwards President."^ Now Joseph Dudley's 
commission as President did not arrive until May, 1686.^ Again, we 
have in the same letter, under date March 25, 1686, the following 
sentence :* " Another Occurence that happened whilst I was here, was, 
the Arrival of the Rose Frigot from England with a New Charter 
brought over by one Rundel" [Randolph].^ But this event did not 
take place until May 14, 1686.^ However, it may be urged that 
Dunton should be forgiven any slight confusion of dates, provided he 
limits himself in these letters to the narration of events which oc- 
curred before his departure, on July 5, 1686. 

But Dunton does not by any means keep within even these rather 
generous limits. His account of John Eliot ^ is largely taken verba- 
tim from Cotton Mather's Life of Eliot, which was not published 
until 1691.® He refers ^ to the publication of the life of Nathaniel 
Mather, which did not appear until 1689.^ He quotes from Increase 



' Letters, p. 65. 

* Everett Kimball, The Public Life of Joseph Dudley (Harvard Historical 
Studies), New York, 1911, pp. 24-25. 

* Letters, p. 137. 

* Sewall's Diary for May 14, 1686 (i. 137-139). What Randolph brought was 
the exemplification of the judgment against the charter and the commission 
for the new government. Sewall (Diary for May 17, 1686) describes the meeting 
at which Dudley showed these papers and announced to the General Court that 
he "could treat them no longer as Governour and Company." 

6 Letters, pp. 194 ff. 

^ Sibley, No. 32. Cotton Mather's Life of John EUot was first published at 
Boston in 1691. In the same year Dunton brought out a second edition in London. 
According to advertisements in the Athenian Mercury this second edition seems 
to have appeared on or about August 3, 1691 (Athenian Mercury, vol. iii. nos. 2 
and 3). There was a third edition (London: John Dunton) in 1694, and the work 
was also reprinted in the Magnalia. Which of these Dunton used I do not know. 

^ "Having taken my leave of Mr. Cotton and Nathaniel Mather (whose Life 
I afterwards Printed) and after that, of their Reverend Father, I return'd home 
hugely pleas'd with my first Visit" (p. 75). 

8 Sibley, No. 7. This work, "Printed by J. Astwood for J. Dunton, 1689," 
was entered in Trinity Term, 1689 (Arberj Term Catalogues, ii. 268). Nathaniel 
Mather died October 17, 1688. 



228 THE COLONIAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS [March, 

Mather's letter to Dr. John Leusden, which is dated July 12, 1687.^ 
More curious still is a remark^ made in connection with Cotton 
Mather. "Cotton Mather ... has very lately finish'd a Church- 
History of New-England, which I'm going to print." Now, as every 
reader of Cotton Mather's Diary knows, the Magnalia was not fin- 
ished until 1697.^ Another allusion,^ which is somewhat less obvious, 
carries the date still further forward. After portraying the admir- 
able character of Comfort Wilkins, Mrs. Green, and Madam Brick, 
Dunton remarks, "And now Sir Daniel, I suppose you'll give some 
grains of Allowance to Sir John: For I believe such Females as 
these, wou'd set even a Gentleman of more Reformation, a longing 
for further Acquaintance with 'em, without making it a Crime." ^ 
This allusion can be to no one but Daniel Defoe, who in reply to 
the attacks made upon his Reformation of Manners (1702), published 
" More Reformation. / A / Satyr / Upon / Himself. / By the Author 
Of /The True Born English-Man." But Defoe's More Reforma- 
tion was not entered for publication until Michaelmas Term of 1703,^ 
and bears the date 1703 upon its title-page. All of these passages, 
except one, throw the date forward indefinitely from 1686. The 
only passage which suggests two limits is the very interesting one in 
connection with the Magnalia, for it is extremely unlikely that after 
1702, in which year the Magnalia was published by Thomas Park- 
hurst, Dunton would have written, even in the rough draft of these 
Letters, that the Magnalia was a work "which I'm going to print." 
Except for this clause, I see nothing in the Letters to show that they 

1 Magnalia, 1702, bk. iii, pp. 194-195. 

2 Letters, p. 75. 

3 Diary for August 20, 1697 (7 Massachusetts Historical Collections, vii. 227). 
It seems almost impossible that "a Church-History of New England" can refer 
to any of Cotton Mather's works except the Magnalia, which is regularly referred 
to by that title in the Diary and which is outlined under that title (" A Scha^me 
of his Church-History of New England") in Cotton Mather's Johannes in Eremo, 
1695 (Sibley, No. 52). 

* Letters, p. 112. 

6 P. 112. In the first edition of the Life and Errors (p. 147) "Sir Daniel" and 
"More Reformation" are printed in capitals; in the Chester MS (Letter iii, pp. 
52-53), they are not. 

6 Arber, Term Catalogues, iii. 371. The Harvard University Library has a 
copy which, though quite clearly of the first edition, has the date trimmed off. 
Note that the motto on the title-page of the Life and Errors is from Defoe's 
More Reformation, which is there referred to by its sub-title (see p. 220 note 7). 



1912] JOHN DUNTON'S LETTERS FROM NEW ENGLAND 229 

were not written after the Life and Errors (1705).^ But without use 
of the MS at the Bodleian, it is impossible to do more, though it is 
certainly impossible to do less, than to cast general doubt upon the 
date of the entire work. 

We can immediately answer in the negative the question, Is this 
work in its present form a body of actual letters? It is clear that 
the letters as we have them have been worked over to make a book, 
if, indeed, they ever were actual letters. The mere fact that Dunton 
frequently appeals to "the reader" ^ suffices to show this, if, indeed, 
any further evidence were needed than the inordinate length and the 
general tone of the work.^ 

But although it is clear that the author intended to make a book, it 
is equally clear that he had not finished preparing the copy for the press. 
In the Chester MS, for instance, we have at one point ^ the note: 
"Here insert the Poem upon Punch, out of Ratcliff's Rambles." ^ 

1 Possibly an exception should be made to this generalization. In his account 
(p. 194) of John Eliot, Dunton, who is following Cotton Mather's account very 
closely, writes: "And this Wife of his Youth [EUot's] became also the Staff of his 
Age, and left him not until about half a year ago." The italics are mine. Cotton 
Mather had written (Life of Eliot, London [John Dunton], 1694, p. 7 ; Magnaha, ed. 
1702, bk. iii. p. 173), "she left him not until about three or four Years before his 
own Departure unto those Heavenly Regions where they now together see light." 
This is very puzzling. John Eliot's wife died March 22, 1687 (Savage, Genealogi- 
cal Dictionary, ii. 110). "About half a year" after that takes us to Septenaber, 
1687, as the approximate date when that particular sentence was written. But 
Dunton ia quoting an account which, presumably, was not accessible to him be- 
fore 1691. Why, when he was changing Mather's words, he did not put the date 
back so that it would agree with the supposed date of Ms letter, is very hard to see. 

2 "And thus, Reader, I have given you the humours of a far different sort of 
Ladies from the former" (p. 116). So on pp. 102 and 105. The word "Reader" 
is used in the corresponding passages (pp. 103, 106, 108) of the Life and Errors. 
I conjecture that Dunton neglected to remove the word when he elaborated these- 
passages from the Life and Errors. 

' The point is made clearer by an examination of the Chester MS. The parts 
which Whitmore omits are, in almost every case, destructive of the idea that 
Dunton's chapters are actual letters. 

* Chester MS, Letter i, p. 12. The poem, if inserted in the Letters, would be 
on p. 13, after the sentence which now concludes the paragraph. 

^ This was Alexander Radcliffe's " Bacchanalia Ccclestia : a Poem, in Praise of 
Punch, compos'd by the Gods and Goddesses," 1680. It was reprinted in "The 
Ramble: an anti-heroick Poem. Together with some Terrestrial Hymns and 
Carnal Ejaculations," 1682. There is a short sketch of Alexander Radcliffe in 
the Dictionary of National Biography. It is to be noted that the sub-title of 
Radcliffe's poem explains the sentence referred to in the previous note. 



230 THE COLONIAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS [March, 

That at least a portion of the composition of these Letters was after 
Dunton had forgotten (if he ever knew them by experience) some of 
the details of his visit is suggested by these and other scattered bits of 
evidence. For instance, it is remarkable to find that, although Dun- 
ton assures us of the intimacy of his acquaintance with such men as 
Higginson, Gerrish, and Hubbard, he gets their names wrong, as well 
as the names of other people ^ who are incidentally mentioned. Dun- 
ton's almost complete omission of matters of public concern is another 
fact in point. For example, he says nothing whatever about the 
epidemic of small-pox, although so great was the affliction that March 
25, 1686, the very date of the letter wherein so many of his characters 
occur, was " appointed ... to be kept as a Day of Solemn Humilia- 
tion and Prayer throughout this Colony." The General Court had 
even voted to "recommend it to the Elders and Ministers of the 
respective Churches, to promote this work on the said day; forbid- 
ding Servile Labour to all People within this Jurisdiction, thereon." ^ 
All this could hardly have occurred if the Letters in their present 
form were based upon real letters, or upon a Journal dating from the 
period of his actual visit. 

In fact, it must be granted that Dunton is a highly unreliable per- 
son, whose narrative cannot be accepted as a record of historical 
fact. As an instance of this let me cite the account of the execution 
of Morgan.^ Dunton assures us that after the sermon he and Cotton 
Mather rode to the place of execution, that a great crowd followed, 
and that from where he was he caught occasional glimpses of Morgan.* 
But if Dunton had been where he says he was on this occasion, he 
could have seen Morgan without difficulty, for we know that Cot- 
ton Mather walked beside the criminal to the place of the execu- 

1 Including one as important as Randolph, whom Dunton calls Randal (Life 
and Errors, ed. 1705, p. 152). He also has Higgins for Higginson and Geery for 
Gerrish (Letters, pp. 254-255, 272), although he says that he was entertained by 
both. Yet of course the spelling of proper names in the seventeenth century, 
even by their owners, was vagarious. 

2 Sewall's Diary for March 17, 1686 (i. 128). 

' Letters, pp. 118 ff. James Morgan, for the crime of murder, was executed 
on March 11, 1686. 

* "But before I leave oflf this subject, I must bring Morgan to his Execution, 
whither I rid with Mr. Cotton Mather, after the Sermon was ended. Some thou- 
sands of the People following to see the Execution. As I rid along I had several 
glimpses of poor Morgan, as he went '''(Letters, p. 135). 



1912] JOHN DUNTON's LETTERS FROM NEW ENGLAND 231 

tio?i} The close of this day of Morgan's execution was made happy 
for Dunton by a picnic. He tells us that he and half a dozen others 
got a boat and rowed to Governor's Island, had a kind of barbecue, 
treated the ladies, and returned in the evening.^ Now a person who 
has just witnessed an execution is certainly entitled to go upon a picnic 
if he so desires. And yet nothing would seem to be more discouraging 
than certain conditions on the day of this picnic, the date of which 
was March 11. The winter had been very severe, and although 
the harbor was no longer frozen over, it had but recently begun to 
open.^ Moreover, Morgan was not "turned off" until half-past five; ^ 
so Dunton could hardly have started on his picnic before dark; and, 
to make the affair seem even more dismal, we find from Sewall's 
Diary that it rained nearly all the evening,^ All that' can be said, 
and all that needs to be said, is that Dunton's accounts of the ex- 
ecution and of the picnic make a remarkable contrast, and that is 
probably what he was chiefly aiming at. 

It remains to consider the most interesting part of the Letters, 
— the portraits of people. 

It is more than a coincidence that in speaking of these portraits 
Dunton almost always employs the same word. He uses it on his 
title-page, he uses it in outlining the third letter (for our immediate 
purpose the most important of them all), and he often uses it in in- 
troducing or concluding his accounts of particular people. That 



1 " Mr. Cotton Mather accompanied James Morgan to the place of Execution 
and prayed with him there " (Sewall's Diary, March 11, 1686, i. 126). 

"There has been since, a second Edition of the Book [the sermons on Morgan's 
crime and punishment preached by Increase Mather, Joshua Moody, and Cqtton 
Mather. First edition, Boston, 1686; second edition, Boston, 1687], with a 
Copy of my Discourse with the poor Malefactor walking to his Execution added 
at the End" (Cotton Mather's Diary for February 12, 1686, 7 Massachusetts 
Historical Collections, vii. 123). Mather's note is written in the margin. For 
an account of this book see Sibley, No. 5, and also p. 250 note 2, below, 

2 "But from the House of Mourning, I rambled to the House of Feasting; 
for Mr. York, Mr. King, with Madam Brick, Mrs. Green, Mrs. Toy, the Damsell 
[Comfort Wilkins] and my self, took a Ramble to a place call'd Governour's 
Island, about a mile from Boston, to see a whole Hog roasted, as did several other 
Bostonians. We went all in a Boat; and having treated the Fair Sex, returned 
in the Evening" (Letters, p. 137). 

3 Sewall's Diary, February, 1, 3, 7, 12, 13; March 12 (i. 120, 121, 126-127). 
* Sewall's Diary, March 11, 1686 (i. 126). 



232 THE COLONIAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS [March, 

word is "character," as employed in the following sentence: "And 
thus, Reader, I have given you the Character of another of my 
Female Friends in Boston." ^ 

The "character" in this sense of the word, was a well recognized, 
prolific, popular, and influential form in English literature of the 
seventeenth century.^ We are fortunate in having several contem- 
porary definitions of it, the most explicit and interesting of which 
is that in a school-book, published in 1665 by Ra[lph] Johnson, who 
gives not only a definition of the character but also three rules for 
making one. The full title of the book, of which the Harvard Uni- 
versity Library contains a copy, is as follows: 

The / Scholars Guide / From the Accidence to the / University. / Or, / 
Short, Plain, and Easie Rules for per- / forming all manner of Exercise in the 
Grammar School, viz. / Rules for Spelling, Orthography, Pointing, Construing, / 
Parsing, making Latine, placing Latine, Variation, Ampliftca- / tion. Allusion, 
Imitation, Observation, Moving-passion. / As Also / Rules for making Collo- 
quys, Essays, Fables, Prosopo- / paeia's. Characters, Themes, Epistles, Orations, 
Declama- / tions of all sorts. / Together With / Rules for Translation, Variation, 
Imitation, / Carmen, / Epi- / grams. Dialogues, Eccho's, Epitaphs, Hymnes / 



1 Letters, p. 105. On his title-page (p. [5]), Dunton announces "Particular 
Characters of Men and Women;" in outlining his third letter he proposes to write 
"The Character of my Boston Landlord, his Wife and Daughter" and to "con- 
clude with the character of Madam Brick as the Flower of Boston, and some other 
Ladyes" (p. 57). And cf. pp. 61, 63, 88, 93, 98, 102, 110, 112, 281. 

2 The character becomes more intelligible as a manifestation of its time if we 
recall the fact that the influence of classicism was favorable to characterization 
by rather strict adherence to type. From Aristotle onward, in fact, there is a 
series of explicit instructions and criticisms on this point. The following passage, 
from Jeremy Collier's Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the 
English Stage (1698), is a good seventeenth-century example: 

The propriety of Manners consists in a Conformity of Practise and Principle; 
of Nature, and Behaviour. For the purpose: An old Man must not appear with 
the Profuseness and Levity of Youth; A Gentleman must not talk like a Clown, 
nor a Country Girl like a Town Jilt. And when the Characters are feign'd 'tis 
Horace's Rule to keep them Uniform, and consistent, and agreeable to their 
first setting out. The Poet must be careful to hold his Persons tight to their 
Calling and pretentions. He must not shift, and shuffle their Understandings; 
Let them skip from Wits to Blockheads, nor from Courtiers to Pedants. On 
the other hand. If their business is playing the Fool, keep them strictly to their 
Duty, and never indulge them in fine Sentences. To manage otherwise, is to disert 
Nature, and makes the Play appear monstrous, and Chimerical. So that instead 
of an Image of Life, 'tis rather an Image of Impossibility (third edition, 1698, 
pp. 218-219). 



1912] JOHN DUNTON's LETTERS FROM NEW ENGLAND 233 

Anagrams, / Acrostichs, Chronostichs, &c / By Ra[lph] Johnson Schoolmaster. / 
[motto] / London, / Printed for Tho. Pierrepont at the Sun in St Pauls Chm-ch- 
yard, 1665. 

The definition and rules ^ are these: 

A character is a witty and facetious description of the nature and 
quaUties of some person, or sort of people. 

1. Chuse a Subject, viz. such a sort of men as will admit of variety of 
observation, such be, drunl^ards, usurers, lyars, taylors, excise-men, 
travellers, pedlars, mercliants, tapsters, lawyers, an upstart gentleman, 
a young Justice, a Constable, an Alderman, and the like. 

2. Express their natures, qualities, conditions, practices, tools, desires, 
aims, or ends, by witty Allegories, or Allusions, to things or terms in nature, 
or art, of like nature and resemblance, still striving for wit and pleasant- 
ness, together with tart nipping jerks about their vices or miscarriages. 

3. Conclude with some witty and neat passage, leaving them to 
the efifect of their follies or studies. 

It would be merely speculation, though not absurd speculation, to 
say that John Dunton himself may have had to commit this passage 
to memory; but it is surely not speculation to infer, merely from the 
presence of a definition of the " character " in a single book of this kind, 
that the form was generally recognized and that it was practised in 
schools just when that fact might easily have influenced Dunton. 

That inference can be amply supported from other definitions of 
the character and from the existence of a very large number of books 
containing characters. Let us first supplement Johnson's definition 
from other seventeenth-century sources, and then consider some of 
the principal books of characters that Dunton may have known. 

In 1614, just after the shameful death of Sir Thomas Overbury, 
there appeared a famous collection of characters by Overbury and 
his friends. The first edition, containing twenty-one characters, was 
soon followed by others with additional characters. The ninth im- 
pression,^ 1616, has no fewer than eighty-two characters, of which 
one is a definition of a character, as follows: 



» P. 15. 

2 Sir Thomas Overbury / His / Wife. / With / Addition Of / many new 
Elegies upon his / untimely and much lamented death. / As Also / New Newes, 
and diuers more Characters, / (neuer before annexed) written by him- / selfe 



234 THE COLONIAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS [March, 

To square out a character by our English levell it is a picture (reall 
or personall) quaintly drawne, in various colours, all of them heightned 
by one shadowing. 

It is a quick and soft touch of many strings, all shutting up in one 
musicall close; it is wits descant on any plaine song.^ 

Although the author of this, by practising the quaintness which he 
preaches, may seem to have confused the subject rather than defined 
it, yet in one important respect he does modify the impression left 
by Johnson: he shows that the character may have for its subject a 
thing as well as a person. As a matter of fact, there are a great 
many impersonal characters.^ 

Another modification needs to be made in Johnson's definition — 
or rather in the impression left by his rules; the character is by no 
means necessarily adverse. Fuller's "Holy State" is more than three 
times as large as his "Profane State;" Hall gives us eleven "Char- 
acterisms of Virtues;" Earle has such types as a Grave Divine, a 
Contemplative Man, a Good Old Man; Overbury has A Wise Man, A 
Noble Spirit, and many others. In fact, almost every writer of char- 
acters except Samuel Butler composed many that were not adverse. 

Various other character-writers ^ contribute to a definition. They 
show us that the character is brief,^ witty ,^ and didactic in purpose.^ 
and other learned Gentlemen. / The ninth impression augmented. / London, / 
Printed by Edward Griffin for Laurence L'isle, and / are to be sold at his shop 
at the Tigers head in / Pauls Churchyard, 1616 (British Museum, 12331. aa. 46). 

1 Overbury's Miscellaneous Works, ed. E. F. Rimbault (Library of Old Au- 
thors), London, 1856, pp. 168-169. 

2 Overbury himself has a character of a prison: Earle (1628) has characters 
of a tavern, a bowling-alley, Paul's Walk, and a prison; and of the thirty-six 
characters in Donald Lupton's London and the Country Carbonadoed, and 
Quartred into Seuerall Characters (1632) only nine are of people. The last book, 
however, is exceptional in this respect. 

3 There are definitions of the character in S. Person's An Anatomicall Lecture 
of Man ... in Essays and Characters, 1664; Richard Flecknoe's Fifty-five 
Enigmatical Characters, 1665; Seventy-eight Characters of so many Vertuous 
and Vitious Persons, 1677; Sir Roger L'Estrange's A Brief History of the Times 
&c. in a Preface to the Third Volume of Observators, 1687. 

* "Every line is a sentence, & every two a period ... ; tis all matter, and to 
the matter, and has nothing of superfluity, nothing of circumlocution" (Flecknoe). 

"Here a man writes a great deal in a little room" (Person). 
^ That the character strives for wit has already appeared from the definitions 
of Overbury and Johnson. 

* "It not only delights but teaches and moves withall, and is a Sermon aa 
well as Picture to every one" (Flecknoe). 



1912] JOHN DUNTON's LETTERS FROM NEW ENGLAND 235 

They also show us — and this is important in considering Dunton — 
that the character is generic though at the same time faithful to life/ 
and that the writer of characters intentionally exaggerates ^ by mak- 
ing the good people better than in real life and the bad people worse. ' 

' "It is the Counterpane of Natures Book, and also of each Individuum" 
(Person). 

"The subject of them is taken from the observations of several Natures, 
Humors, and Dispositions; and whilst I name no body, let no body name themselves 
if they be wise" (Seventy-eight Characters). 

"A Character, . . . Shoots Hail-Shot, and Strikes a great many more than 
ever the ilfar&s-man, either Aiin'd at, or Dreamt of" (L'Estrange). 

This last phase of the matter is excellently put in the dialogue about the 
"Character-Coat" in Defoe's Review (vol. vii. numb. 15) reprinted in Mr. Andrew 
McFarland Davis's A Bibliographical Puzzle (PubUcations of this Society, xiii. 
9-10). 

2 "It extols to Heaven, or depresses into Hell; having no mid'place for Purga- 
tory left" (Flecknoe). 

' To bring to a close this explanation of the character there is reprinted below 
John Earle's portrait of "A Modest Man," which appeared in 1628 in the Micro- 
cosmography: 

A Modest Man 
Is a far finer men than he knows of; one that shewes better to all men then 
himself e, and so much the better to al men, as lesse to himselfe: for no quality 
sets a man off like this, and commends him more against his will: And he can 
put up any injury sooner then this, (as he cals it) your Irony. You shall heare 
him confute his commenders, and giving reasons how much they are mistaken, 
and is angry almost, if they do not beleeve him. Nothing threatens him so much 
as great expectation, which he thinks more prejudiciall then your under-opinion, 
because it is easier to make that false then this true. He is one that sneaks from 
a good action, as one that had pilfered, and dare not justifie it, and is more blush- 
ingly deprehended in this, then others in sin. That counts al publike declarings 
of himselfe but so many penances before the people, and the more you applaud 
him, the more you abash him, and he recovers not his face a moneth after. One 
that is easie to like anything of another man's, and thinkes all hee knowes not 
of him better then that he knowes. He excuses that to you, which another would 
impute, and if you pardon him, is satisfied. One that stands in no opinion because 
it is his owne, but suspects it rather, because it is his owne, and is confuted, and 
thankes you. Hee sees nothing more willingly then his errors; and it is his error 
sometimes to be too soone perswaded. He is content to be Auditor, where hee 
only can speake, and content to goe away, and thinke himselfe instructed. No 
man is so weake that he is ashamed to leame of, and is lesse ashamed to confesse 
it: and he findes many times even in the dust, what others overlooke and lose. 
Every man's presence is a kinde of bridle to him, to stop the roving of his tongue 
and passions: and even impudent men looke for this reverence from him, and 
distaste that in him, which they suffer in themselves, as one in whom vice is ill- 
favoured, and shewes more scurvily then another. And hee is coward to nothing 
more then an ill tongue, and whosoever dare lye on him hath power over him, 



236 THE COLONIAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS [Maech, 

It is perhaps beginning to be clear that the character was a popu- 
lar and prolific form. Bishop Hall's Characters of Virtues and Vices 
(1608) contained twenty-six separate characters; Overbury's char- 
acters, eighty-two in all, reached an eighteenth impression in 1664; 
Earle's Microcosmography, first published in 1628, contained seventy- 
eight characters and reached an eighth edition within sixteen years. 
Thomas Fuller's The Holy and the Profane State (1642), which con- 
tained forty-nine characters, went through at least four editions by 
1663. Samuel Butler's characters, posthumously published, number 
no fewer than one hundred and eighty-seven. These are merely the 
greater names. In addition there were scores by minor or anony- 
mous authors, and also — particularly after the beginning of the 
Civil War — an immense number of pamphlets containing single 
characters. It would, in fact, be an entirely sober statement to say 
that when Dunton sailed for New England he might, had he collected 
character books as George Thomason did his pamphlets, have been 
the possessor of between three and four hundred of these volumes, 
containing in all considerably over a thousand separate characters.^ 

But let me not by mentioning George Thomason seem to disparage 
the labors of John Dunton, particularly with reference to the char- 
acter. For the fact is that of the portraits in the Letters from New 
England — Mr. Heath, Dr. Bullivant, the jailer, Mrs. Green, the 
Widow Brick, and all the rest of them — no fewer than thirty-two 
are, either wholly or in part, taken almost verbatim from such books of 
characters as we have been discussing. The discovery of this fact, 
which radically modifies our estimate of the Letters, is the chief occa- 
sion for this paper. 

and if you take him by his looke, he is guilty. The maine ambition of his Hfe is 
not to be discredited: and for other things, his desires are more hmited then his 
fortunes, which he thinkes preferment though never so meane, and that he is 
to doe something to deserve this. Hee is too tender to venter on great places, 
and would not hurt a dignity to helpe himselfe. If he doe, it was the violence of 
his friends constrained him, and how hardly soever hee obtaine it, he was 
harder perswaded to seeke it. 

1 E. C. Baldwin's bibliography of character-books (Publications of the Modem 
Language Association of America, New Series, xii. no. 1, pp. 104-114), though 
the largest in print, could be supplemented by hundreds of other titles. The col- 
lections and notes of Philip Bhss, appended to his edition (London, 1811) of Earle's 
Microcosmography, are very useful. Some of the best characters are collected 
in Henry Morley's Character Writings of the Seventeenth Century (Morley's 
Universal Library, London, 1891). 



1912] JOHN DUNTON's LETTERS FROM NEW ENGLAND 237 



To see how he does it let us place side by side Dunton's character 
of Mr. Heath 1 and Thomas Fuller's character of "The Good Mer- 
chant" in the Holy and the Profane State (1642) : ^ 



Fuller 



... He wrongs not the buyer in 
number, weight, or measure. 

These are the landmarks of all trad- 
ing, which must not be removed: for 
such cozenage were worse than open 
felony. First, Because they rob a man 
of his purse and never bid him stand. 
. , . Thirdly, as much as lies in their 
power, they endeavour to make God 
accessory to their cozenage, . . . For 
God is the principal clerk of the market: 
all the weights of the bag are his work. 
Prov. xvi. 11. 



2. He never warrants any ware for 
good, but what is so indeed ... 5. He 
makes no advantage of his chapman's 
ignorance, chiefly if referring himself 
to his honesty: where the seller's con- 
science is all the buyer's skill, who 
makes him both seller and judge, so 
that he doth not so much ask as 
order what he must pay. 



When one 

told old Bishop Latimer that the 
cutler had cozened him in making him 
pay twopence for a knife, not in 
those days worth a penny: 



DUNTON 

The next I '11 mention shall be Mr. 
Heath — a grave and sober Merchant: 
And were I now to write the Charac- 
ter of a good Merchant, I wou'd as 
soon take him for the Exemplar of one, 
as any Man I know. This I am sure, 
he never wrongs the Man that buys of 
him, in Number, Weight or Measure. 
For 'tis his Judgment that these are 
the Statute Laws of Trade, which, like 
those of the Medes and Persians, must 
never be remov'd; and I have heard 
him say that such a Cozenage is worse 
than open Felony; because they rob a 
Man of's Purse, and never bid him 
stand; and besides that they Endeav- 
our to make God accessory to their 
cozenage by false weights : For God 
is the Principal Clerk of the Market: 
All the Weights of the Bag (as Solomon 
tells us, Prov. 16, 11,) being his Work. 
There are two things remarkable in 
him, (and I will instance no more.) 
One is, That he never warrants any 
Ware for good, but what is so indeed: 
And the other. That he makes no Ad- 
vantage of his Chapman's ignorance, 
especially if he referrs himself to his 
Honesty. Where the Conscience of 
the Seller is all the Skill of the Buyer, 
the Seller is made the Judge, so that 
he doth not so much ask as Order 
what he must pay. I have read that old 
Bishop Latimer once bought a knife 
that cost him two pence (which was it 
seems accounted a great Price in those 
days), and shewing it unto his Friend, 
he told him. The Cutler had cozen'd 
him, for the knife was not worth a 



1 Letters, pp. 88-89. 

2 I have used Pickering's edition, London, 1840. The character there occupies 

pages 88-91. 



238 



THE COLONIAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS [March, 



No, quoth Latimer, he cozened 
not me, but his own conscience. 
One the other side, St. Augustine ^ tells 
us of a seller, who out of ignorance asked 
for a book far less than it was worth; 
and the buyer (conceive himself to be 
the man if you please) of his own ac- 
cord gave him the full value thereof. 



penny: No, replied Latimer, he coz- 
en'd not me, but his own Conscience. 
So far from that was this honest Gen- 
tleman, that when a Bookseller (that 
shall be nameless) did out of Igno- 
rance demand less for a Book than it 
was truly worth, he of his own accord 
gave him the full value of it. This 
honest Gentleman did me the favour 
to be my daily Visitor, and has brought 
me acquainted with one Mr. Gore of 
New York, with whom I trade, which 
I hope will be to my advantage. 

The character of Daniel Epes^ of Salem is worth noting, partly 
because it occurs in the Life and Errors ^ though not in the Letters, 
and partly because in forming this portrait Dunton, instead of taking 
a single eariier character, as he usually does, has combined Earle's 
"Downright Scholar" and his "Contemplative Man," ^ both printed 
in 1628: 



Earlb 



He has not humbled his meditations 
to the industry of complement, nor 
afflicted his brain in an elaborate leg. 
.... He cannot kiss his hand and 
cry, madam, nor talk idle enough to 
bear her company. . . . The hermitage 
of his study has made him somewhat 
uncouth in the world, ... He will not 
lose his time by being busy, or make 
so poor a use of the world as to hug 
and embrace it. 



Dunton 

I must also remember the great 
civilities I met at Salem from Mr. 
Epes, (the most eminent Schoolmaster 
in New-England) : He hath sent many 
Scholars to the University in New- 
England. He is much of a Gentleman; 
yet has not humbled his meditations to 
the industry of compliments, nor 
afflicted his brain in an elaborate leg, 
(he cannot kiss his hand, and cry, 
Madam, your humble servant, nor 
talk idlf enough to bear her company). 
But though a School, and the Hermit- 
age of his Study, has made him un- 
courtly, yet (which is a finer accom- 
plishment) he is a person of solid 
Learning; and does not, like some 
Authors, lose his time by being busy 
about nothing, nor make so poor a use 
of the World, as to hug and embrace it. 

3. The footnote is Fuller's. 
Sibley (Harvard Graduates, ii. 266) cites Dunton's 



1 Lib. 13 de Trinitat. c 

2 Of the Class of 1669. 
character of Epes. 

» i. 128. Cf. note 2 on p. 252, below. 

* The last sentence is from "A Contemplative Man;" the rest is from 
Downright Scholar" (Microcosmography, ed. 1811, pp. 61-63, 93). 



"A 



1912] 



JOHN DUNTON S LETTERS FROM NEW ENGLAND 



239 



A few of Dunton's minor figures, who have no names, are also 
copied from earlier books of characters. Such are the host at Graves- 
end, the jailer at Boston, and the troublesome landlord at Lynn.^ 
The first of these is reprinted below in comparison with the character 
of "An Host" in the Overbury collection of 1614: 



Sib Thomas Overburt 
An Host 



DuNTON 

As soon as we had look'd a little 
about the Town, we went into an Inn, 
where we found our Host a man that 
consisted of Double (Beer) ^ and fel- 
lowship; for as he was sure to supply 
us with Drink even without asking, so 
he would always thrust himself in for a 
snack, in helping to drink it; yet to say 
the truth, he was a Man of great humil- 
ity, and gave us power as well over 
himself as his house. I observ'd him 
to be exceeding willing to answer all 
Mens Expectations to the utmost of his 
Power, unless it were in the Reckoning, 
and there he would be absolute; and 
had got that Trick of Court-Greatness, 
to lay all mistakes upon his Servants. 
His wife was like Cummin-seed to a 
Dove-house, and helpt to draw in the 
Customers; and to be a good Guest, 
was a suflBcient Warrant for her Lib- 
erty. And to give you his character in 
few words, he is an absolute slave, for 
he neither eats, drinks, nor thinks, but 
at other mens charges and Appoint- 
ments. But he sells himself at an Ex- 
travagant rate, and makes all his Cus- 
tomers pay dearly for the Purchase. 
Nor was he at all singular, for in the 
whole Town, there Vas never a Barrel 
better Herring (Letters, pp. 11-12). 

It is astonishing to note the plausibility of Dunton's past tenses 
here and of his assurance that he himself observed the facts. 



. . . He consists of double beere and 
fellowship, . . . 



He entertaines humbly, and gives 
his guests power, as well of himselfe as 
house. He answers all mens expecta- 
tions to his power, save in the reckon- 
ing: and hath gotten the tricke of 
greatnesse, to lay all mislikes upon his 
servants. His wife is the cummin seed 
of his dove-house; and to be a good 
guest is a warrant for her liberty. , . . 
In a word, hee is none of his owne; for 
he neither eats, drinks, or thinks, but 
at other mens charges and appoint- 
ments (Overbury's Works, ed. Rim- 
bault, p. 71). 



1 Letters, pp. 11-12, 120-121, 169-170. The sources are indicated in the table 
(pp. 247-253, below). 

2 Whitmore has "Beds." Here, and several times elsewhere, Dunton is so 
faithful to the original that one can safely emend Whitmore's text. 



240 THE COLONIAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS [Maech, 

And now we must look at Comfort Wilkins, Mrs. Green, and the 
Flower of Boston. There are, to be sure, other women characterized 

in the Letters: Mrs. D , Mrs. T , Mrs. F y, and 

three others,^ all unfavorably delineated, are copied from earlier 
books of characters. But the Damsel (Comfort Wilkins), Mrs. 
Green, and the Widow Brick are far more elaborately portrayed 
than any of the other characters in the Letters. Not only does 
Dunton devote more space to summarizing their virtues, but he rep- 
resents them as playing a considerable part in his stay here. In fact, 
Mrs. Green used to tell him that if Mrs. Dunton should die, " none 
was fit to succeed her but Madam Brick." " The Widow Brick was 
without doubt," says Whitmore,^ "Joanna, daughter of Arthur 
Mason, who married first Robert Breck, and secondly Michael Perry. 
From Dunton we have the following items for identification: She 
was a widow, twenty-two years old in 1686, the mother of two chil- 
dren, and a member of Rev. James Allen's church." ^ The character 
certainly fulfills these requirements, and, although Dunton in his 
manuscript first wrote "Mrs. Birch" and then crossed it out in favor 
of "Mrs. Brick," I dare say Whitmore is partly right. But it is 
equally true that Mrs. Brick is the third section of the third 
part of the "Ladies Calling ... By the Author of the Whole 
Duty of Man," &c., which reached a fifth edition in 1677.^ I 

1 The three others are Mrs. Ab 1; Doll S der; and Mrs. , who in 

the Life and Errors (i. 110-111) is called Mrs. H. For their sources, see the table, 
pp. 247-253, below. 

2 Letters, p. 106 note. 

^ The First Church of Boston. Whitmore might have added that Dunton's 
Madam Brick had been a widow two years (Letters, p. 110). Whether this is true 
of Mrs. Robert Breck I do not know. 

Joanna Mason, the daughter of Arthur and Joanna (Parker) Mason, was born 
March 26, 1664 (Boston Record Commissioners' Reports, ix. 92). The date of 
her marriage to Robert Breck seems not to be known. Of her two children, 
the elder, Joanna, was born June 12, 1681 (ix. 154), and the younger, Robert, 
on April 30, 1683 (ix. 159). The Widow Brick married Michael Perry on July 
12, 1694 (ix. 218). 

* The first edition appears to have been printed at Oxford in 1673. The 
British Museum has a copy of the second edition (Oxford, 1673) and of the third 
edition (Oxford, 1675). The Harvard Library has a copy of the fifth edition 
(Oxford, 1677) as well as a folio volume, very well printed "at the Theater in 
Oxford" in 1684, containing The Ladies Calling as the first piece in The Second 
Part Of The Works Of the Learned and Pious Author Of The Whole Duty of Man. 

On the much disputed authorship of The Whole Duty of Man, see the Intro- 



1912] JOHN DUNTON's LETTERS PROM NEW ENGLAND 



241 



reproduce the entire character with portions of the earher char- 
acter beside it.^ 



The Ladies Callinq 

1. The next state which can succeed 
to that of Marriage, is Widow-hood. 



She is a woman whose head hath 
been quite cut off, and yet she liveth.^ 



. . . Love is strong as death, Cant. 8. 6. 
and therefore when it is pure and gen- 
uine, cannot be extinguish'd by it, but 
burns hke the Funeral-Lamps of old 
even in Vaults and Charnel-houses. 
The conjugal Love, transplanted into 
the Grave . . . improves into Piety, 
and laies a kind of sacred Obligation 
upon the Widow, to perform all offices 
of respect and kindness which his re- 
mains are capable of. 

2. Now those Remains are of three 
sorts, his Body, his Memory, and his 
Children. The most proper expression 
of her love to the first, is in giving it an 
honorable Enterment; . . . prudently 
proportion'd to his Quality and For- 
tune, so that her Zeal to his Corps may 
not injure a Nobler Rehc of him, his 
Children. 



DUNTON 

The Character of The Widow Brick, 
the very Flower of Boston; That of a 
Widow is the next state or change that 
can succeed to that of marriage. And 
I have chosen my Friend the Widow 
Brick, as an Exemplar to shew you 
what a Widow is: Madam Brick is a 
Gentlewoman whose Head (i. e. her 
Husband) has been cut off, and yet 
she lives and Walks: But don't be 
frighted, for she's Flesh and Blood still, 
and perhaps some of the finest that you 
ever saw. She has sufficiently evidenc'd 
that her Love to her late Husband is as 
strong as Death, because Death has not 
been able to Extinguish it, but it still 
burns like the Funeral Lamps of old, 
even in Vaults and Chamel-Houses; 
But her Conjugal Love, being Trans- 
planted into the Grave, has improv'd 
it self into Piety, and laid an Obligation 
upon her to perform all offices of Re- 
spect and Kindness to his Remains, 
which they are capable of. 

As to his Body, she gave it a decent 
Enterment, suitable to his quality; or 
rather above it, as I have been in- 
form'd; for Mr. Brick was Dead and 
Buried before I came to Boston. And 
that this was the Effect of that dear 
love she had for him, appears in this. 
That she wou'd not suffer the Funeral 
Charges to make any Abatement from 



duction to Pickering's edition of it (1842); Hearne's Remarks and Collections, 
ed. C. E. Doble, Oxford Historical Society, i. 17, 19, 282, 324; ii. 299; iv. 420; 
C. E. Doble in the Academy (1882), ii. 348, 364, 382; and the articles in the 
Dictionary of National Biography on Richard Allestree, Richard Sterne, and 
John Fell. Mr. Doble thinks that The Whole Duty of Man was written by 
Sterne and revised by Fell. 

1 It will be observed that Dunton uses, in addition to The Ladies Calling, two 
short passages from Thomas Fuller's character of "The Good Widow" in The 
Holy and the Profane State (1642). 

» Fuller, "The Good Widow" (Holy and Profane State, ed. 1840, p. 19). 



242 



THE COLONIAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS 



[March, 



The Ladies Calling 

Her grief for her husband though 
real, is moderate, . . . our widow's 
sorrow is no storm, but a still rain.i 

And this decency is a much better 
instance of her kindness, then all those 
Tragical Furies wherewith some Women 
seem transported towards their dead 
Husbands, those frantic Embraces and 
caresses of a Carcass, which betray a 
little too much the sensuality of their 
Love. And . . . those vehement Pas- 
sions quickly exhaust themselves, and 
. . . seems rather to vanish then con- 
sume. 

3. The more valuable Kindness 
therefore, is that to his Memory, en- 
devouring to embalm that, keep it 
from perishing. . . . 

. . . She is ... to perfume his 
Memory ... by reviving the remem- 
brance of whatever there was praise- 
worthy in him, vindicating him from all 
Calumnies and false Accusations, and 
stifling (or allaying) even true ones as 
much as she can. 



And indeed a Widow can no way 
better provide for her own Honor, then 
by this tenderness of her Husbands. 

4. Yet there is another Expression 
of it, inferior to none of the former, and 
that is the setting such a value upon 
her relation to him, as to do nothing 
unworthy of it. 



'Twas the dying charge of Augustus 
to his Wife Livia, Behave thy self well, 
and remember our Marriage. And she 
who has bin wife to a Person of Honor, 



DUNTON 

the Children's Portions. Her grief for 
his Death was such as became her, great 
but moderate, not like a hasty Shower, 
but a still Rain: She knew nothing of 
those Tragical Furies wherewith some 
Women seem Transported towards 
their Dead Husbands; those frantick 
Embraces and Caresses of a Carcass, 
betray a little too much the Sensuality 
of their Love. Such violent Passions 
quickly spend themselves, and seem 
rather to Vanish than Consume. But 
Madam Brick griev'd more moderately, 
and more lastingly. She knew there 
was a better way of Expressing her 
Love to him, and therefore made it her 
Business to Embalm his Memory, and 
keep that from Perishing. And I al- 
ways observ'd, That whenever she 
spoke of her Husband, it was in the 
most Endearing manner. Nor cou'd 
she ever mention him, without paying 
the Tribute of a Tear to his Memory. 
She wou'd often be reviving the remem- 
brance of some Praise-worthy Quality 
orother in him; and if any happen' d to 
say something of him not so commend- 
able, she wou'd excuse it with a world 
of Sweetness, and by a frowning glance 
at the Relator, declare how much she 
was displeas'd. And tho' I cannot 
think it her design, yet I believe she 
was sensible enough that she cou'd no 
way better provide for her own Honour 
than by this Tenderness she shew'd for 
her Husband's. But Madam Brick 
shew'd a better way of expressing the 
Honour she had for her Husband's 
Memory, and that is. She set such a 
value on her Relation to her Husband, 
as to do nothing that might seem un- 
worthy of it. 

Historians inform us, That 'twas 
the Dying Charge of Augustus to the 
Empress Livia, Behave thy self well, 
and remember our Marriage. This 



1 Fuller, "The Good Widow" (Holy and Profane State, ed. 1840, p. 19). 



1912] 



JOHN DUNTON's letters FROM NEW ENGLAND 



243 



' The Ladies Calling 

must BO remember it, as not to do any- 
thing below her self, or which he (could 
he have foreseen it) should justly have 
bin ashamed of. 



5. The last Tribute she can pay him, 
is in his Children. These he leaves as 
his Proxies to receive the kindness of 
which himself is incapable; 



so that the Children of a Widow may 
clame a double portion of the Mothers 
love; one upon their Native right, as 
hers; the other, as a bequest in right 
of their dead Father. 
And, indeed, since she is to supply the 
place of both Parents, 'tis but neces- 
sary she should put on the AffectioHa 
of both, and to the tenderness of a 
Mother, add the care and conduct of a 
Father. First, in a sedulous care of 
their Education : and next in a prudent 
managery of their Fortunes; . . . 



. . . will furnish them with Ingen- 
ious and Vertuous Principles, such as 
may set them above all vUe and ignoble 
practices. 

... As to the . . . managing of 
their Fortune, there is the same rule 
. . . , viz. to do as for themselves, that 
is, with the same care and diligence (if 
not a greater) as in her own Concern. 
I do not say that she shall confound the 
property, and make it indeed her own, 
by applying it to her peculiar use, a 
thing I fear which is often don, espe- 
cially by the gaier sort of widows, who 
to keep up their own Equipage, do 
sometimes incroach upon their sons 
peculiar. 

10. I have hitherto spoke of what 
the widow ows to her dead husband; 



DUNTON 

Madam Brick made her Care; For 
having been the Wife of a Gentleman of 
good Quality, she so remember'd it, as 
not to do any thing below her self, or 
which Mr. Brick (cou'd he have fore- 
seen it) might justly have been asham'd 
of. But Madam Brick had yet another 
way of Expressing the Value she had 
for Mr. Brick, and that is, by the kind- 
ness she show'd to the Children which 
he left behind him, which were only 
two: And this was so remarkably 
Eminent in her, that I have heard her 
say, Her Children might now claim a 
double Portion in her love, one on their 
Native Right, as being Hers; and the 
other on the Right of their dead Father, 
who had left them to her: "And truly," 
said she, "since I must supply the place 
of both Parents, 'tis but necessary 
that I shou'd put on the Affections of 
both; and to the Tenderness of a 
Mother, add the Care and Conduct of 
a Father." She was as good as her 
Word, both in a sedulous care of 
their Education, and in a Prudent Man- 
agement of their Fortunes. As to their 
Education she took care that they 
might have that Learning that was 
proper for them, and above all, that 
they might be furnished with ingenu- 
ous and vertuous Principles, founded 
on the Fear of God, which is the be- 
ginning of all true Wisdom. And as 
to their Fortunes, she was so far from 
Embeziling them, a Practice too com- 
mon with some Widows, that she aug- 
mented them, while it was in the Power 
of her hand to do it. (For Madam 
Brick is but a Young Widow, tho' she 
is the Mother of two Children.) 



But Madam Brick is one that has 
yet more refined and Exalted Thoughts: 



244 



THE COLONIAL SOCIETT OF MASSACHUSETTS 



[March, 



The Ladies Calling 

but there is also somewhat of peculiar 
Obligation in relation to herself. God 
who has plac'd us in this World to pur- 
sue the interests of a better, directs all 
the signal acts of his Providence to that 
end, and intends we should so inter- 
pret them . . . and a widow may more 
then conjecture, that when God takes 
away the mate of her bosom, reduces 
her to a solitude, he do's by it sound a 
retreat from the lighter jollities and 
gaieties of the world. And as in com- 
pliance with civil custom she . . . 
should put on a more retir'd temper 
of mind, a more strict and severe be- 
havior: 

and that not to be cast off with her veil, 
but to be the constant dress of her 
widowhood. 



DuNTON 

She is highly sensible that God, who 
has plac'd us in this World to pursue 
the Interests of a better, directs all the 
signal Acts of his Providence to that 
end, and intends we shou'd so interprett 
them; And therefore she wisely re- 
flected that when God took away from 
her the Mate of her Bosom, and so re- 
duc'd her to a solitude, he thereby, as it 
were, Sounded a Retreat to her from 
the lighter Jollities and Gayeties of the 
World; and therefore in Compliance 
to the Divine Will, and that she might 
the better Answer the Requirement of 
the Almighty, tho ^ put on a more re- 
tired Temper of Mind, and a more 
strict 2 . . . 

Neither, did she suffer Her Pioua 
behaviour, to be cast off with her 
Widow's Vail, but made it the constant 
Dress both of her Widowhood and Life; 
and as a consequence hereof, she be- 
came a Member of Mr. Allen's Con- 
gregation; and liv'd a life of Sincere 
Piety: And yet was so far from Sowr- 
ness either in her Countenance or Con- 
versation, that nothing was ever more 
Bweet or agreeable: Making it evident 
that Piety did not consist in Morose- 
ness, nor Sincere Devotion in a super- 
cilious Carriage; 'twas the Vitals of 
Religion that she minded, and not 
Forms and Modes; and if she found 
the Power of it in her heart, she did 
not think her self oblig'd to such a 
starch' dness of Carriage as is usual 
amongst the Bostonians, who value 
themselves thereby so much, that they 
are ready to say to all others. Stand off, 
for I am holier than thou. She did not 
think herself concem'd to put on a 
Sorrowful Countenance, when the Joy 
of the Lord was her strength. 



* So Whitmore, and so Chester MS, Letter iii, p. 48. One would expect 
"she," as in The Ladies Calling. 

* Whitmore notes: "Here the manuscript is imperfect." 



1912] 



JOHN DUNTON S LETTERS FROM NEW ENGLAND 



245 



The Ladies Calling 



There are many things which are but 
the due comphances of a Wife, which 
yet are great avocations, and interrup- 
tions of a strict Devotion; when she is 
manumitted from that subjection, 
when she has less of Martha's Care of 
serving, she is then at hberty to chuse 
Mary's part. Luk. 10. 42. 



. . . Those hours which were before 
her husbands right, seem now to de- 
volve on God the grand proprietor of 
our time: that discourse and free con- 
verse wherewith she entertain'd him, 
she may now convert into colloquies 
and spiritual entercourse with her 
maker. 



DuNTON 

I had much the greater value for 
Madam Brick, on the Account of a 
Discourse that past between Mrs. 
Green and her, which (as Mrs. Green 
related it to me) was to this effect: Mrs. 
Green commended her very much, in 
that being a Young Widow, in the 
bloom of all her Youth and Beauty, (for 
she was but twenty-two) she had given 
up so much of her time to the Exercise 
of Devotion, and the Worship of God; 
To which she reply'd, ' She had done 
but what she ought; for in her Married 
state she found many things which yet 
are but the due Compliances of a Wife, 
which were great Avocations to a Strict 
Devotion; but being now manumitted 
from that Subjection, and having less 
of Martha's Care of Serving, it was but 
reasonable she shou'd chuse Mary's 
better part.' "And those hours (added 
she) w;hich were before my Husband's 
Right, are now devolv'd on God, the 
Great Proprietor of all my time: And 
that Discourse and free Converse with 
which I us'd to entertain Mr. Brick, 
ought now to be in Colloquies and heav- 
enly Entercourses with My dear Re- 
deemer." Nor was her Piety and De- 
votion barren, but fruitful and abound- 
ing in the Works of Charity, and she 
cloath'd the Naked as far as her Ability 
permitted. And tho' my self and Mr. 
King went thither often (for she wou'd 
scarce permit a single visit) we never 
found her without some poor but honest 
Christian with her, always discoursing 
of the things of Heaven, and ere she 
went, supplying of her with the things 
of Earth. How long she may remain a 
Widow, I have not yet consulted with 
the Stars to know, but that she has 
continu'd so two years, is evident to all 
that are in Boston. 

To conclude her Character, the 
Beauty of her Person, the Sweetness and 
Affability of her Temper, the Gravity 



246 THE COLONIAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS [MARCH, 

DUNTON 

of her Carriage, and her Exalted Piety, 
gave me so just a value for her, that 
Mrs. Green wou'd often say, Shou'd 
Iris Dye (which Heaven forbid) there's 
none was fit to succeed her but Madam 
Brick: But Mrs. Green was partial, 
for my poor Pretences to secure vertue, 
wou'd ne'er have answer'd to her Tow- 
ring heighths. 'Tis true, Madam 
Brick did me the Honour to treat me 
very kindly at her House, and to admit 
me often into her Conversation, but I 
am sure it was not on Love's, but on 
Vertue's score. For she well knows 
(at least as well as I do) that Iris is alive: 
And therefore I must justifie her Inno- 
cence on that account. And tho' some 
have been pleas' d to say. That were I 
in a single state, they do believe she 
wou'd not be displeas'd with my Ad- 
dresses, As this is without any ground 
but groundless Conjectures, so I hope 
I shall never be in a capacity to make 
a Tryal of it. 

But, I 'm sure our Friendship was all 
Platonick (so Angels lov'd) and full as 
Innocent as that of the Philosopher who 
gave it the name; but if Plato was not 
very much wrong'd he never lov'd 
vertue so refinedly, as to like to court 
her so passionately in a foul or homely 
habitation as he did in those that were 
more Beautiful and Lovely; and this 
sufficiently justifies my Friendship to 
Madam Brick and her Spotless Inno- 
cence in accepting of it. Thus, Reader, 
I have given you the Character of 
another of my Friends of the Fair Sex 
in Boston; and leave you to judge 
whether or no she deserve the Title of 
the Flower of Boston, which at first 
sight I gave her (Letters, pp. 105- 
111). 

So much for the Widow Brick, the Flower of Boston. And Comfort 
Wilkins and Mrs. Green are drawn from the same source — The 
Ladies Calling. Even the remarks which they are represented as 



1912] JOHN DTJNTON's LETTERS FROM NEW ENGLAND 247 

actually having made to John Dunton or in his presence are taken al- 
most verbatim from those earlier characters of the abstract Virgin, 
Wife, and Widow, as conceived by an English clergyman thirteen 
years before John Dunton came to Boston. 

For convenience I have arranged in a table such borrowings 
in Dunton's Letters as have been traced to their source. The 
letter W indicates that Dunton's indebtedness was detected by 
Whitmore. 

Dunton's Source Dunton 

First Letter 

Overbury's "Fair and Happy Milk- Description of a Milkmaid (omitted 

maid" (Works, ed. Rimbault, pp. by Whitmore; i see Letters, p. 11). 

118-119). 
Overbury's "Host" (Works, p. 71). The Host and his Wife (pp. 11-12). 

Overbury's^ "Almanac-maker" (Works, An Astrologer (pp. 17-18). 

pp. 92-93). 
Overbury's "A Maquerda, in plain A Bawd.* 

EngUsh a Bawde" (Works, pp. 99- 

100). 
Overbury's "A Whoore" (Works, pp. An Impudent Whore.' 

82-83). 
Overbury's "A very Whore" (Works, Another.* 



pp. 83-84). 



Second Letter 



Overbury, "A Saylor" (Works, pp. George Mbnk, the Mate (p. 26). 

75-76). 
Overbury, "A Saylor" (Works, pp. Charles King, the Gunner (p. 26). 

75-76). 
Josselyn, p. 8.* St. Elmo's Fire (p. 31). 



1 But to be found on p. 8 of Chester MS, Letter i. 

2 This character originally appeared in the skth edition (1615) of the Overbury 
collection, and is regularly spoken of, in a loose way, as Overbury's. But m the 
second edition (1615) of John Stephens's New Essayes and Characters, a person 
who signs himself I. Cocke claims as his own three of the Overbury characters, of 
which one is the Almanac-maker. There is a copy of Stephens's book in the Har- 
vard University Library. 

3 Omitted by Whitmore. Chester MS, Letter i, pp. 23-24. 

< John Josselyn, An Account of Two Voyages to New Englaad, Made during 
the years 1638, 1663, Boston, William Veazie, 1865. 



248 



THE COLONIAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS 



[March, 



Dunton's Source 



DUNTON 



Partly from Overbury's "A Wise Man," 
and partly from Overbury's "A 
Noble Spirit" (Works, pp. 60-62). 

Josselyn, pp. 124-126. 

Josselyn, p. 139. 



J. W., A Letter from New England, 

1682, p. 2.1 
Josselyn, p. 138. 



Jossleyn, p. 139. 

Josselyn, pp. 137-138. 

Josselyn, pp. 134-137. 
Partly from Josselyn, p. 137.* 

J. W., A Letter from New England. 



Probably from Josselyn, p. 39, third 

paragraph, though not verbatim. 
Fuller, "The Good Merchant" (Holy 

and Profane State, ed. 1840, pp. 

88-91). 
Earle, "A Modest Man" (Microcos- 

mography, ed. 1811, pp. 147-150). 
Fuller, "The Good Merchant." 



Third Letter 

Mr. Burroughs, a Merchant (pp. 59- 
62). 

Description of Boston (pp. 66-69). W. 
"There is no trading for a Sharper with 

them," etc., to end of the sentence 

(p. 69). 
"As to their religion" (p. 69), etc., to 

the end of the paragraph. W. 
"The Government, both Civil and 

Ecclesiastical," etc., to the end of 

the sentence (p. 70). 
Account of the collection taken in 

church after the Sunday afternoon 

sermon (pp. 70-71). 
"Every church (for so they call)," etc., 

to the end of the following sentence 

« (P- 71). 

" As to their laws," and the rest of the 

paragraph (p. 71). W. 
"For being drunk" (p. 72), etc., 

through "and so our poor debtors" 

(p. 73, 1.7). W. 
"But for lying and cheating" (p. 73) 

through "fasten his Tallons first 

upon 'em" (p. 74). W. 
"And thus, my friend," etc., to the 

end of the paragraph (p. 74). 
Mr. WUIy (p. 81). 



Mr. Mortimer (p. 86). 

Mr. Heath, a good merchant (pp. 



^ Letter / From / New-England / Concerning their Customs, Manners, / 
And / Religion. I .... I London. / Printed for Randolph Taylor near Sta- 
tioners Hall, 1682. Reprinted in facsimile by the Club for Colonial Reprints of 
Providence, Rhode Island, Providence, 1905. Edited by George Parker Winship. 

2 Dunton copies Josselyn's statements of the punishments; i. e., p. 72, first 
paragraph as far as the colon; all of the second paragraph; the first sentence in 
the third; as far as the semicolon in the fourth; all of the last; the first sentence 
in the first paragraph on p. 73; the first sentence in the second paragraph on 
p. 73. 



1912] 



JOHN DUNTON S LETTERS FROM NEW ENGLAND 



249 



Dunton's Source 

Overbury, "A Mere Pettifogger" 
(Works, pp. 129-131). 

Contains one sentence from Richard 
Flecknoe's character "Of an extream 
Vitious Person." ^ 

Fuller, "The Good Physician" (Holy 
and Profane State, ed. 1840, p. 42). 

Partly from Fuller's "The True Gentle- 
man," partly from his "Good Physi- 
cian" (Holy and Profane State, ed. 
1840, pp. 120-122, 43). 

The Ladies Calling, part ii. Sect. 1. 

The Ladies Calling, ii. Sect. 2. 

The Ladies Calling, ii. Sect. 3. The 
character of Mrs. Brick also con- 
tains two sentences from Fuller's "the 
Good Widow" (Holy and Profane 
State, ed. 1840, p. 19). 

Fuller's "The Harlot" (Holy and Pro- 
fane State, ed. 1840, pp. 287-290). 

Flecknoe, "Of an inconstant disposi- 
tion" (ed. 1673, p. 17). 

Flecknoe, "Of a Proud One" (Fifty- 
five Enigmatical Characters, 1665.* 
The character "Of a Proud One," 
which is not mentioned in the table 
of contents, stands between Nos. 
31 and 32). This character also 
contains one sentence ("Had she 
been with the Israelites," etc.) from 
Fuller's essay "Of Apparel" (Holy 
and Profane State, ed. 1840, p. 133). 



DtTNTON 

Mr. Watson, a Lawyer (pp. 89-90). 
Mr. C 1 (p. 90). 

Dr. Oaks (p. 93). 

Dr. Bullivant (pp. 94-96). 



Comfort Wilkins, a Virgin (pp. 98-102). 
Mrs. Green, the Wife (pp. 102-105). 
Madam Brick, the Widow (pp. 106- 
111). 



Mrs. Ab 1 (pp. 112-113). 

Doll S der (p. 115). 

Mrs. 8 (pp. 115-116). 



Earle, "A Prison" (Microcosmography, 

1811, pp. 156-158). 
Overbury, "A Jailer" (Works, ed. 

Rimbault, pp. 166-168). 



Third Letter (continued) ^ 

The Prison, in Prison Lane (pp. 118- 

119). 
The Jailer (pp. 120-121). 



1 Omitted by Whitmore. Chester MS, Letter iii, pp. 28-29. 

* A / Collection / Of the choicest / Epigrams / And / Characters / of / 
Richard Flecknoe. / Being rather a New Work, / then a New Impression / of 
the Old. / Printed for the Author 1673, p. 34. There is a copy in the Harvard 
University Library. * 

^ In the Life and Errors (pp. 110-111) she is called Mrs. H . 

* Bodleian Library. Wood 868. (5.) 

* Whitmore divides the third letter into two parts. 



250 THE COLONIAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS [March, 

Dunton's Source Dtjnton 

Cotton Mather, The Call of the Gos- Cotton Mather on the execution of 

pel Applyed, etc., Second edition, Morgan (pp. 122-124). ^ W. 

1687 (Sibley No. 5).^ 

Joshua Moody, An Exhortation to a Joshua Moody on the same ^ (pp. 125- 

Condemned Malefactor, etc., 1687.2 129). W. 

Increase Mather, A Sermon, Occa- Increase Mather on the same i (pp. 

sioned by the Execution, etc.. Second 129-135). W. 

Edition, 1687.2 

Increase Mather, A Sermon occasioned Morgan's last words (pp. 135-136). W. 



by the Execution, etc., pp. 35-36.^ 



Fourth Letter 



First Ramble (To Charlestown). 
Josselyn, p. 126. Description of Charlestown (pp. 149- 

150). 
Roger Williams, Key, pp. 100-105.' Indian Hospitality (pp. 151-153). W. 

^ These borrowings are, of course, acknowledged by Dunton. 

2 A Sermon / Occasioned by the Execution of / a man found Guilty of / 
Murder / Preached at Boston in N. E. March 11th 168| / Together with the 
Confession, Last Expressions, / & solemn Warning of that Murderer to all per- / 
sons; especially to Young men, to beware of those / Sins which brought him to 
his miserable End. / By Increase Mather, Teacher of / Church of Christ. / The 
Second Edition. / [Texts: Deut. 19. 20, 21; Prov. 28. 17] / Boston, Printed by 
R. P. Sold by J. Brunning / Book-seller, at his Shop at the Comer of the / 
Prison-Lane next the Exchange. Anno 1687. 

This seems to serve as the general title for the volume; at least, the copy in 
the Harvard Library, which is paged continuously, has no other title at the begin- 
ning. Increase Mather's sermon occupies pp. 1-36. Then comes "The / Call of 
the Gospel / Applyed / Unto All men in general, and / Unto a Condemned 
Malefactor in particular. / In a Sermon, Preached on the 7th / Day of March. 
1686. / At the Request, and in the Hearing of a man under / a just Sentence of 
Death for the horrid Sin of / Murder. / By Cotton Mather. / Pastor to a Church 
at Boston in N. E. / The Second Edition. / [Text] / [Motto] / Printed at Boston, 
by Richard Pierce. 1687." Cotton Mather's sermon occupies pp. 37-82, and ia 
followed by "An / Exhortation / To A Condemned / Malefactor / Delivered 
March the 7th 1686. / By Joshua Moody, Preacher of / the Gospel at Boston 
in New-England. / [Texts] / Printed at Boston, by R. P. Anno 1687." Moody's 
sermon occupies pp. 83-113. Then follows (p. 114) an address from "The Printer 
to the Reader," which is signed "R. P." Then comes (pp. 115-124) "(The Dis- 
course of the Minister with / James Morgan on the Way to his Execution." 

2 A Key into the Language of America: Or, An help to the Language of the 
Natives in that part of America, called New-England. Together, with briefe 
Observations of the Customes, Manners and Worships, etc. of the aforesaid 
Natives, . . . By Roger Williams . . . London, . . . 1643. (Reprinted by the 
Narragansett Club, Fifth Series, Volume i. Providence, 1866). My references, 
like Whitmore's, are to the numbering of the volume, which contains other tracts 
besides the Key. 



1912] 



JOHN DUNTON S LETTERS FROM NEW ENGLAND 



251 



Dunton's Source 
Roger Williams, Key, pp. 107-108. 
Josselyn, p. 127. 



DuNTON 

Second Ramble (To Medford). 
IndianHospitality , continued (p . 1 55) . W. 

Third Ramble (To New-Town), 
Description of New Town (pp. 155-156). 



Josselyn, p. 128. 
Roger Williams, Key, pp. 
132-135. 



120-128, 



Roger Williams, Key, pp. 158-162. 
Josselyn, p. 128. 

Earle, "A bold, forward Man" (Micro- 
cosmography, ed. 1811, pp. 122-125). 
Roger Williams, Key, pp. 207-220. 



Roger Williams, Key, pp. 233-237. 
Josselyn, pp. 122-123. 



Roger WilUams, Key, pp. 248-252. 
Josselyn, p. 123. 



Roger Williams, Key, p. 167. 
Josselyn, p. 123. 



Roger Williams, Key, pp. 196-202. 
Roger Williams, Key, pp. 187-190. 
Josselyn, pp. 123-124. 



Josselyn, p. 124. 

Cotton Mather, Life of Eliot (ed. 1691, 

portions of pp. 6-73 ; ed. 1694, pp. 

6-78; Magnalia, ed. 1702, bk. iii. 

pp. 173-190). 
Cotton Mather, Life of Eliot (ed. 1691, 

pp. 74 ff ; ed. 1694, pp. 78 ff; Mag- 

naha, ed. 1702, bk. iii. pp. 190 ff). 



Fourth Ramble (To Winnisimet). 
Description of the Town (pp. 163, 167). 
Indian Houses (pp. 163-167). W. 

Fifth Ramble (To Lynn). 
Indian Travelling (pp. 168-169). W. 
Description of Lynn (p. 169). 
The Troublesome Host (pp. 169-170). 

Indian Religion (pp. 171-176). W. 

Sixth Ramble (To Nantascot). 

Indian Money (pp. 177-179). W. 

Description of Nantascot (including 
the paragraph beginning, "Being 
come to Nantascot," and also the 
next paragraph). 

Seventh Ramble (To Wissaguset). 
Indian Hunting (pp. 181-182). W. 
Description of the Town (p. 183). 

Eighth Ramble (To Braintree). 
Climate of New England (pp. 184-185). 

W. 
Description of Braintree (p. 185). 

Ninth Ramble (To Dorchester). 

Fish of New England (pp. 186-189). W. 

Beastsof NewEngland (pp. 189-190) . W. 

Description of Dorchester (pp. 190- 

191). 

Tenth Ramble (To Roxbury). 
Description of Roxbury (p. 192). 
Life and Character of EUot (pp. 194- 
199). W. 



Conversion of the Indians (pp. 200- 
202). W. 



252 



THE COLONIAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS 



[March, 



Dunton's Source 



Cotton Mather, Life of Eliot (ed. 

1691, pp. 88 £f; ed. 1694, pp. 94 S; 

Magnalia, ed. 1702, bk. iii. p. 194). 
Josselyn, p. 127. 

Josselyn, pp. 37-38. 

Cotton Mather, Magnalia, ed. 1702, 

bk. vi. p. 51. 
Roger Williams, Key, pp. 163-166. 

Cotton Mather, Life of EUot (ed. 1691, 
pp. 80 ff; ed. 1694, pp. 85 ff ; Mag- 
nalia, ed. 1702, bk. iii. pp. 192 ff). 

Roger Williams, Key, pp. 203-205. 

Cotton Mather, Life of Eliot (ed. 1691, 
pp. 100 ff, 104-108, 89-92; ed. 1694, 
pp. 106 ff, 111-116, 95-99; Magna- 
lia, ed. 1702, bk. iii. pp. 197 ff, 198- 
199, 194). 

John Eliot, The Dying Speeches of 
Several Indians.^ 



Josselyn, p. 132. 

Overbury, " A Reverend Judge" 
(Works, ed. Rimbault, pp. 136-137). 



DuNTON 

Fifth Letter 

Eliot's Labors among the Indians (pp. 
211-212). 

Description of Watertown (pp. 214- 

215). 
Brief description (about 12 hnes) of 

the country through which he rode 

to Watertown (p. 216). 
The Indian Government (pp. 218-220, 

1.8). 
Authority of the Prince's Punishments 

(p. 220, two paragraphs). 
Of the conversion of the Indians (pp. 

221-224). W. 

Indian Clothing (pp. 224-225). W. 
The Converted Indians of Natick (pp. 
225-233). W. 



Dying Speeches of Indians (pp. 233- 
241). W. 

Sixth Letter 

Settlement of Salem 2 (pp. 252-253). 
Mr. Sewel (p. 254) 



^ Through the kindness of Professor W. W. Lawrence of Columbia University, 
Mr. Will T. Hale transcribed for me from the copy of the original edition in the 
New York Public Library the portions of EUot's book here used by Dunton. The 
text of Eliot is copied almost verbatim. 

On the date of the original, Sabin (No. 22148) remarks: "The date of 1665 
which has been assigned to it, is doubtless incorrect, as on page 25 following Eliot 
speaks of John Speen and Anthony as living in 1670, whose 'Dying Speeches' 
are given in the tract named." 

2 From his account in the Letters of the visit to Salem, Dunton omits a char- 
acter of Mr. Daniel Epes (Life and Errors, p. 128), which is taken from Earle's 
"A Down-right Scholar" (Microcosmography, 1811, pp. 61-64). Whitmore 
(p. 256 note) notices the omission, quotes the character of Mr. Epes and the two 
following paragraphs from the Life and Errors, and observes that they "doubtless 
should be in the text" of the Letters at this point. But he strangely fails to re- 
member that the third of these paragraphs, very slightly modified to make it fit 
Boston instead of Salem, had been incorporated in the Letters and is to be found 
on pp. 62-63 of his own edition. 



1912] 



JOHN DUNTON S LETTERS FROM NEW ENGLAND 



253 



Dunton's Source 

Earle, "A Grave Divine" (Microcos- 
mography, ed. 1811, pp. 9-11). 



Roger Williams, Key, pp. 228-231. 

Josselyn, pp. 129-130. 

Roger Williams, Key, p. 180. 

Roger Williams, Key, pp. 246-247, 

239-245. 
JosseljTi, p. 129. 
Overbury, "A Good Wife" (Works, ed. 

Rimbault, pp. 72-73). 
Overbury, " A Noble and Retired 

Housekeeper" (Works, pp. 115-116). 
Roger Williams, Key, pp. 285-264. 
Roger Williams, Key, pp. 254-257. 

Roger Williams, Key, pp. 142-147. 
Roger Williams, Key, pp. 274-277. 



DuNTON 

Mr. Higgins(on) (pp. 254^255). 

Seventh Letter 

Marriage Customs of Indians (pp. 267- 
269). W. 

Description of Wenham and the sur- 
rounding country (pp. 271-272). 

Indian Husbandry (pp. 272-275). W. 

Indian Trade and Money (pp. 277- 
279). W. 

Description of Ipswich (p. 280). 

Mrs. Steward (p. 281). 

Mr. Steward (pp. 281-282). 

Indian Warfare (pp. 272-275). W. 
Indian Games and Sports (pp. 286-288) .j 

W. 
Indians and News (pp. 292-293). W. 
Indian Mourning and Burial (pp. 

294r-295). W. 



Prom this list it appears that there are at least eighty-four cases in 
which Dunton incorporated borrowed material in the Letters. Of 
these Whitmore noted thirty-three: eighteen from Roger Williams, 
six from Cotton Mather, three from Josselyn, two from Increase 
Mather, two from J. W., one from John Eliot, and one from Joshua 
Moody. To these we have added fifty-one passages, — twenty from 
Josselyn and thirty-one from various writers of characters; namely, 
fourteen from Overbury, seven from Fuller, four from Earle, three 
from Flecknoe, and three from the author of The Ladies Calling. 

It may be suggested — indeed it has been suggested ^ — that 
"had this volume been issued in Dunton's life-time, he might have 
confessed his indebtedness." For two reasons this seems unlikely. 

First, it is unlikely because of the principle which, seen in its extreme 
form, makes a novelist avoid footnotes. Dunton, to be sure, was not 
a novelist; he was not even able to achieve such approaches to the 
novel as were made by Addison and Defoe. Yet it seems clear that 
when an author, in copying such material as that which Dunton takes 
from Roger Williams, uses such pains as his to make the ideas appear 



^ By Whitmore, in his Introduction, p. xxiii. 



254 THE COLONIAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS [March, 

either to be original or to have been communicated to him by persons 
with whom he spoke in the com-se of his rambles, he is manifestly 
trying^ to write a kind of work in which acknowledgments of in- 
debtedness would be out of place. 

A second and more tangible objection is that to make such ac- 
knowledgments appears not to have been Dunton's custom. For in 
at least two works that were published in his lifetime — the Life and 
Errors (1705) and Athenianism (1710) — Dunton borrows freely and 
without acknowledgment. 

In the first part of his Athenianism (1710) Dunton prints as his 
own four poems ^ which had appeared in 1685 in Samuel Wesley's 
Maggots,^ of which Dunton had written in 1705: "I once printed a 
Book, I remember, under the title of ' Maggots'; but it was written 
by a Dignitary in the Church of England." ^ 

In his Life and Errors (1705) Dunton prints, without acknowledg- 
ment, not only many of the characters that appear in his Letters, 
but many others as well. Comfort Wilkins, Mrs. Green, the Widow 
Brick, Mr. Heath, Dr. Oakes, Dr. BuUivant, and Dunton's other 
Boston friends appear there, sometimes more briefly sketched than in 
the Letters, but still replete with phrases taken from earlier books 
of characters. And in addition there are a great many characters of 
Dunton's English acquaintances — printers, publishers, hack-writers, 
and so on — in which he borrows at least a phrase or two from such 
writers as Hall and Earle. The character of Major Hatley, placed 

^ Wliether Dunton did this out of self-esteem and the desire to steal a repu- 
tation, or with the wish to soften formal exposition into something more en- 
tertaining, does not for the moment concern us. Probably his motives were 
mixed. 

2 "A King turn'd Thresher. By Mr. Dunton" (Athenianism, pp. 213-215; 
Maggots, pp. 94-96); "A Covetous old Fellow having taken Occasion to hang 
himself a little; another comes in, in the Nick, and cuts him down; but instead 
of thanking him for his Life, he accuses him for spoiling the Rope. — By Mr. 
Dunton" (Athenianism, p. 215; Maggots, pp. 68-70); "On the Bear-fac'd Lady. 
By Mr. Dunton" (Athenianism, pp. 218-220; Maggots, pp.29-31); "The Innocent 
Fraud: Or, the Lyar in Mode and Figure. By Mr. Dunton" (Athenianism, pp. 
221-222; Maggots, pp. 62-63). 

' Maggots: / Or, / Poems / On / Several / Subjects, / Never before Handled. 
/ By a SchoUar. / London, / Printed for John Dunton, at the Sign / of the 
Black Raven, at the Corner of Princes / Street, near the Royal Exchange. 16S5. 

There is a copy in the Harvard University Library, 
* Life and Errors, i. 187. 



1912] JOHN DUNTON's LETTERS FROM NEW ENGLAND 255 

beside one of Hall's types, will give a fair idea of the extent of the 
borrowing in the more fully developed portraits.^ 

Joseph Hall Dunton 

The Valiant Man (1608) Major Hatley 

He is the master of himself, and sub- He is the master of himself, and sub- 
dues his passions to reason, and by this dues his passions to reason; and by 
inward victory works his own peace. this inward victory, works his own 

peace. He is well skilled in Military 
Discipline; and, from being a Captain, 
... He lies ever close within himself, is advanced to a Major. He lies ever 
armed with wise resolution, and will close within himself, armed with wise 
not be discovered but by death or resolution, and will not be discovered 
danger. but by Death or Danger. "Piety 

never looks so bright as when it shines 

... and he holds it the in Steel;" and Major Hatley holds it 

noblest revenge, that he might hurt the noblest revenge that he might hurt, 

and doth not (Hall's Works, Oxford, and does not. I dealt with this Military 

1837, vi. 94). Stationer for six years, but left him, 

with flying colours, to trade with his 
honest Servant (Life and Errors, i. 
255). 

Where does all this leave us? How does the discovery of these 
borrowings affect our knowledge of the persons characterized and 
our estimate of Dunton's Letters from New England? 

It seems to me that Dunton's characters may be made to fall into 
three groups. First come a number of portraits in the course of 
which Dunton used a phrase or a sentence from some earlier writer 
of characters. Probably the phrase fitted as well as any original 
phrase would have fitted. If so the validity of the portrait is not 
affected. Next come those instances in which fairly well-known 

1 Among the earlier characters drawn on are Earle's "Grave Divine," which 
furnishes parts of the sketches of Mr. Spademan (pp. 140-141), Mr. Lobb (p. 175), 
Mr. Trail (p. 176); Earle's "Modest Man," which becomes Mr. Cleave (p. 228) 
and also furnishes a part of Mr. Samuel Hool (p. 255); and Earle's "Staid Man," 
parts of which go to make up Mr. Grantham (p. 246), Mr. Darby (p. 247), and 
Mr. Littlebury (p. 256). Bishop Hall's characters are also used: his "Humble 
Man" for parts of Mr. Merreal (p. 254) and Mr. Sheafe (p. 254), and his "Truly- 
Noble" man in Mr. Proctor (pp. 255-256) and in parts of Mr. Merreal (p. 254), 
Mr. Sheafe (p. 254), and Mr. Samuel Hool (p. 255). S. Malthus (p. 459), who 
published Dunton's Life and Errors, could hardly have been pleased to find on 
reading it that she was thought to combine the faults of Earle's "Detractor" 
and hia "She Precise Hypocrite." 



256 THE COLOOTAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS [Makch, 

persons like Mr. Epes, Dr. Bullivant, Mr. Heath, and others, are 
characterized almost wholly in the words of earlier writers. In these 
cases it is unsafe to apply the details of the portrait: we can be sure 
merely that the character was — or that Dunton thought him — a 
worthy merchant, a skilled physician, or whatever else; that is, we 
can apply the title, not the details. Finally come persons who are 
wholly characterized in the words of earlier writers, and of whom 
nothing is known except what Dunton tells us. Here it would seem 
that, in the words of Sir John Seeley, "history fades into mere 
literature." 

Historically considered, Dunton's Letters from New England have 
suffered a good deal in the course of this examination. Indeed, an his- 
torian might almost say that they are not letters, that they are not 
from New England, and that they are not by John Dunton. But I 
wish to suggest, in conclusion, that the trouble is not that the book 
is a bad one, but that it has been wrongly catalogued. If we take it 
off the American History shelves — where it never belonged — and 
put it with English Fiction, we shall find, I think, that precisely those 
portions of it which were before the most absurd and deceptive are 
now the most significant. 

Few phases of the transition in English literature from the seven- 
teenth to the eighteenth century are more important or more difiicult 
to trace than the beginnings of English prose fiction. These begin- 
nings have to be sought in a great variety of documents, including ficti- 
tious voyages, histories, and letters, imaginary adventures of animals, 
allegories, visions, and many other devices, which, although they often 
contain fact, do not aim to be true.^ Another matter vital to the 
transition is the development from the abstract character to the novel 
of character. It is well known that Addison and Steele, in the Tatler 



1 See E. C. Baldwin, Character Books of the Seventeenth Century in Relation 
to the Development of the Novel, Western Reserve Bulletin, October, 1900; 
H. S. Canby, The Short Story in English, New York, 1909, especially Chapters 
viii and ix; F. W. Chandler, The Literature of Roguery, Boston and New York, 
1907, especially Chapter vii; Martha Pike Conant, The Oriental Tale in England 
in the Eighteenth Century, New York, 1908, especially Chapter iv; W. L. Cross, 
The Development of the English Novel, New York, 1899; Rudolf Furst, Die 
Vorlaufer der Modernen Novelle im achtzehnten Jahrhundert, Halle, 1897; 
Charlotte Morgan, The Rise of the Novel of Manners, New York, 1911 (good 
bibliography) ; Sir Walter Raleigh, The EngUsh Novel, New York, 1904. 



1912] JOHN DUNTON'S LETTERS FROM NEW ENGLAND 257 

and the Spectator, mark a half-way point in several phases of this 
transition. They used fictitious letters and diaries, and in particular 
they made great progress in modifying the old abstract character, 
which they felt to be stiff, vague, and repellently didactic. Accord- 
ingly, they gave their characters names, they made them speak, they 
even, by becoming Mr. Nestor Ironsides or Mr. Spectator, walked 
right into the page themselves and spoke with their characters. 
They supplied descriptive backgrounds, and indeed almost every- 
thing that a novel requires, except the plot. Consequently we say 
truly that they greatly improved the technique of characterization in 
prose fiction. 

Did not John Dunton, very imperfectly and probably with motives 
very much mixed, do many of these things? He took abstract char- 
acters, named them, made them speak, spoke with them, went on 
picnics with them, and, in the case of Madam Brick, almost fell in 
love with one of them. His mistake was not in introducing so much 
fiction, but rather in not casting entirely loose from fact. Our mis- 
take has been in keeping him on our shelves beside Sewall and Josse- 
lyn, instead of beside Ned Ward and Daniel Defoe. 



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